All The Good Things That Are You

Your eyes light the way in the dark

Warm, inviting pools of safety

When the world is at its worst

 

Your voice is the song that inspires me.

lulling me away from the eerie depths

of the nightmares that fill waking life,

in a world of hateful people

 

Your smile fills my favorite moments

when you and I lay in the park

the sun dancing off your lips as you speak

 

Your heart is too big to describe

with the tiny words that fill my simple mind

I am at a loss

and cannot write down

 

All the good things that are you.

Fully Fledged

Fully fledged

I fall from the cool green shadows

far from the silver light of stars

far from the delicate zephyr

carrying the scent of moss and pine needles

 

The ground is hard and cold

My thoughts hazed from the fall

whirled into a world of must-haves and will-do’s

I lose my sight

And my throat is stripped of voice

 

I rove the land

whispering words lost to shadows

I cannot remember who I am

as I strive to be what I am told to be

 

Discouraged,

I slither into hiding

I vow never to come out

for fear of facing the sting of judgement

naked without my voice

 

I search hopelessly in the night

grasping at the frayed threads of a former life

one that I cannot seem to mend

and shed many tears of anguish

dying to find myself within the empty shell of knowledge

 

In the furthest reaches of my soul

a song is sung

painfully, hesitantly

tentative notes wavering outward

 

Details again come to my attention

My vision clears and I blink in the light

New and uncertain

Unfamiliar with the old way

Broken by the new

 

Breath catching, I spread my wings

Open my mouth and loudly sing

Words return, an overwhelming torrent

Bravely afraid I jump into the sky

 

Fully fledged

I circle the moon

at home here among the stars

and lonely

the way I like it.

 

Calypso and the Reusable Shopping Bag

One night, Chepi and I were playing Baldur’s Gate on the PS2 (having a nerd fest on a rainy day), while our cat Calypso was chasing her tail. Being a kitten, she wasn’t very good at it yet, and kept getting her claws stuck in the carpet. Since she would get a lot of momentum going, every time she would get her claw stuck, she would flop over on the floor, then leap to her feet, looking confused. After a while, she moved into the kitchen, where the tile floor would not interfere with her claws. Chepi and I kept forgetting to play the game because we were laughing so hard at our insane cat.

Some time had passed and she grew quiet and we resumed playing the game. I did keep hearing this scratching sound in the background though. Engrossed in the game, I was startled when I heard a “thump”. Chepi and I looked around and Calypso had climbed onto the shelves where all of our everyday things were stored (reusable shopping bags, keys, backpacks, purse, etc.) and was rolling around inside our stack of re-usable shopping bags. We laughed as she climbed inside one and stuck her head out, ears attentive.

Then, for no reason at all, Calypso became startled and lept off the shelf, she handles of the bag around her neck. Surprised that the bag was following her, she ran around and around the living room, the bag covering her back like a turtle shell. Chepi and I were both laughing so hard we were crying.

Lessons learned: always use reusable shopping bags, wash your reusable shopping bags regularly.

How Calypso Became “Nibbles”

In the summer of 2008, I was preparing to move away from my family to go to school. My life was fast and exciting and new. I was also very afraid. I would be on my own. I had planned to have a roommate, but as I had never met the girl before, I was rather nervous. So, before I moved away, my boyfriend and I went to the pound and picked out a kitten for me to take to my new home. I had my eyes on a fluffy one, but my boyfriend saw a tiny grey and black and white kitten. She was so feisty and kept trying to jump out of her cage. We were so taken with her, that we brought her home right away. I named her Calypso, thinking it suited her mischievous manner.

In the days before I moved, Chepi was over at my parents’ house all the time. It was hard to think that we would see each other a lot less for a while. One day, Chepi was sitting on the floor in my parent’s living room and Calypso was trying to climb into the woodbox next to the fireplace. He scooped the purring, wiggling ball of fur up in his hands and laid her on his chest, where she just sat and purred and eventually fell asleep as he pet her small head. He smiled and said, “You like that don’t you, Mr. Nibbles.”

I laughed and told him that he could not call our girl cat “Mr. Nibbles.” So he dropped the “Mr.” and Calypso has been Nibbles ever since. And she is really Chepi’s cat. Though she will sleep under the covers next to me when he is gone on a fire, and she loves to come over to my computer and meow until I pet her, his lap is the one that she will leap to first, and it is he that she follows to the kitchen. Right after she and I moved into our new house in Rohnert Park, she would wait on the stairs for him, expecting him to come through the door and take off his boots, not knowing that he would not be living there for a while.

I am glad that she is Chepi’s cat though, because Chepi is mine and I am his and we share everything (almost). Am I number one in the eyes of our cat? No. But I should know by now (and all you cat owners will agree with me), I am graced to even be in her presence.

Meet Calypso

Our cat, Calypso (fondly known as Callie or Nibbles (a story for another time)) is probably one of the weirdest cats I have ever met. For instance: when she was a kitten, she liked to take baths. Yep. She would just sit in the water. Only when she got water in her ears would she actually get mad. Another classic example: her inexplicable attraction to our dishwasher. When we lived in the Bay Area, Callie would often run full boar from the living room, to the kitchen, and promply run headfirst into the dishwasher. There were actually a few dents on the door from her noggin. She has since outgrown some of her weirdness, but she continues to make us laugh. In some ways, she does all the things one would expect of a cat: clawing the furniture, meowing in the middle of the night, sleeping all day; but sometimes it is hard for me to believe that she is only a cat, and as silly as it may sound, I have learned a lot about life from her. So, without further ado, I present “Nibbles of Wisdom: The Things I Learned From my Cat”.

Better Than I Imagined

At the top of this tower I wait

the grey bricks have crumbled in the years I have waited for you

and vines have crept up the wall

twining their clenching tendrils around eroded stone.

 

Why haven’t you come to me and made me your own?

Remembering the day I declared my love for you from across the wall

A tear comes to my eye as I bitterly admit to myself that life is better when imagined.

I am a peasant when I should be a queen.

 

Forever I will wait for the words I long to hear, feeling hope is a wasted emotion.

Here I am wasting away at the top of my tower,

and no heart but mine own for comfort

no stregnth but mine to save me.

 

I’m tired of hoping, tired of longing, tired of being disappointed.

I don’t know what you are waiting for, but the dragon is growing restless,

and the light in me is fading.

My hands grow hesitant upon the pen.

 

How dare you leave me alone with your words?

Take them back! I am haunted by my own.

They dance in front of me and tease in and out of my ears.

Their structure eluding me; beauty stripped from my verbage

 

Screw Shakespeare

and his eloquent vocabulary.

My aching heart cannot articulate the stories I have in my head.

My fear of failure too strong.

 

I grow weary and begin to think you will never claim me.

I am but a shadow of inspiration in a sea of doubt.

How could you admire me when I have done nothing?

The embers of hope in my heart smolder, the last vesitges of fire shimmering at their burnt edges.

 

Alas! I hear the echo of footsteps, the strike of sword on stone.

The roar of the pent-up beast’s frustration, a fury unmatched.

You escape unscathed, and from my tower you free me,

Your eyes meet mine and you say

 

“I told you all along that you must do this on your own.

I would be there to save you if you fell too deep.

In your heart you must know that you are never alone

I am yours and you are mine to keep.”

 

 

 

 

 

Cloud

While looking to the east this morn,

I did see passing by

the most beautiful white cloud

to ever meet my eye.

 

It’s shape was nothing special;

it did not look like a beast,

but rather a lonesome streak of light

on a floating, stormy sea.

 

It caught my glimpse a moment

then quickly passed away,

and soon after, the sun did rise

with the golden spledor of day.

 

The white cloud sailed on,

almost gone from sight,

bright against a sheet of gold,

like the moon against the night.