ten piedad

On a Friday morning, I croaked open my keyboard and typed the tune my heart had been humming for the last good while.

A letter, that allowed me to expand the notions of my inner world in a way that I hadn't previously granted myself.

It was only after traveling through mountains, valleys, deserts, lakes, and thunderstorms that I recognized the elements of my own emotions and began stretching into them.

Weeks of untangling from my own withdrawing. I grappled with the gusts of glory that had sunken me into solitudes that could merely + miraculously bring me home.

On this day of Venus, I opened.

I took deep breaths into essences I hadn't felt ready to put words to. I retraced my steps through racing thoughts and deemed each idea worthy of voicing.

Disregarding transition fluidity and thesis-crafting, I stepped back in a sigh and found that I had written what was written on the walls of my heart.

With efforts to return to traditional paper-based practices, to refrain from inducing the strain of blue light, I have rejected my laptop, my keyboard, my digital typewriter in recent years. Forgetting that this is the technology of my time, the tool my tween self reveled in, and the means in which most of my meaning has been forged.

Word Document, a dear friend.

The intimacy of an empty page cooed at me with its blinking cursor acting as my beacon into depths I had ditched after college; after essay, after essay, after essay.

A tenderness returned to my typing. Communication steeped in playfulness.

I didn't rush, I wasn't frenzied. I felt. I didn't question the readiness of these expositions.

When I returned to the piece with a new piece of pastry, I had found that I had written my favorite thing in a very long time.

The truest thing I had written in a very long time. The most darling. As real and glistening as the blueberry curd that laid before me.

Savoring each bite and each line, I went to show my face to the sun, newly adorned with yesterday's childlike courage.

The magic of matter of factness settled nicely overnight. I rose and wrapped my skirt around my waist, ran my fingers through the thickets of my hair, and set out to find fresh figs : a rubied reward for my typed triumph.

Fruits secured, I set my course to the closest park, excited to make my way through a few chapters of a borrowed fable. I strolled over to a shaded side with a tree trunk acting as my chair back.

I was seated for a short moment before a masked man perched beside me.

Pleasantries + personal identifiers exchanged. Him, from Southern Mexico. Estados Unidos pa mi. Antonio. Nosotros solo hablamos en español.

He asks about my husband having, to which I falsely admit to keeping one in distant lands. Undecided fountain side friend or foe, my guards are up. I have never been one to mention when I am traveling alone and I acknowledge the presence of even a fantastical man as a barrier often deemed respectable amongst other men. Antonio, has now begun his monologue on matrimony and his hopes in acquiring a wife.

Leaning into the dense bark at my back, I am aware of each inch of his advances. Shifting and shuffling closer and farther, his every retreat only bringing a deeper dive into my space.

He's asking me to spend the day with him. To leave and visit adjacent streets, his family's shop seemingly close by. My out-of-sight "spouse" supplying no real buffer between me and Antonio's desires for us to get to know one another. I decline and express my excitement to relish in the reading I had toted.

He's not listening. He is getting increasingly more insistent.

I tell him I am done talking. I would like to read my book in silence. He pleads to continue, to keep sitting with me. Huffing and puffing at my excuses. He becomes a flurried fanatic, his eyes darting while his mouth and nose remain concealed behind black surgical fabric.

I protest, stating my firm intentions to read, noting the trouble he's brewing. With Spanish hardly ripe enough to be considered even my second language, my comprehension is dwindling as his speech picks up speed.

My instincts flare.

I unsheathe my book from my bag and open my chapter, wishing him good day. He hangs his head and sighs and leans and continues to craft our alternative plans. I offer my final tame refusal.

"¿no puedes o no quieres? "

he whispers in such serpentine fashion that my muscles shutter.

I snap. Shouting and suddenly equipped with the words to incinerate our interaction, to renounce any conversational invitation extended, to claim my time, body, mind, and spirit as solely my own. I beg for peace to be returned to me.

My spine has straightened against the stalk and I tower over this now cowering man. With a mutter and moan, he dawdles. I stare into the pages in my lap and try to settle into this bilingual rage I was previously unfamiliar with, yet now relying on. Any waiver in my certainty surely serving him an opportunity to remain at my side.

Antonio sulks and slinks off my stoop, only to mope to an adjoining pew. Watching. I blankly bury my attention into text without truly consuming any of it. I am heavy with observance and left without my next steps planned.

I don't want to move from my post, I don't want to forfeit the scene I was so intent on enjoying.

I don't want to wander into riskier roads, unsure of Antonio's moods and motives.

Ten minutes pass and I've glanced up twice only to confirm his glued gaze.

In a decisive instant, I swoop together my things and stride towards the street across the way.

Having memorized my way back out of habit, I took bold steps, my forward attention waxing.

After three turns, a few prayers, and a clearing of an alley, I let my breath go.

At this point, a rush of pride appeared.

Partially for my swiftness + street nav, partially for my vocabulary and success in shoving off this sudden swashbuckler.

I had never been affronting + angry in Spanish before.

It dawned on me :

I had never been affronting + angry in English before.

Not in public, not with strangers. Barely with those who have known + gnawed me.

My accomplishment is slowly dissolved in my disbelief. I hadn't encountered this aggressive persistence in quite some time and I didn't expect it to reach me through such cheerful matinée spirits.

Unshaken yet shook, the feeling lingers with me for a few days.

It perplexed me: to have dug into these trenched treasures in and of myself and have my first interaction with another stripped of loveliness, of understanding, of gentle adoration.

I felt tainted and confused, as if these expressions contradicted each other.

I thought my way to a new understanding:

Writing had me stretch into drowsy crooks of myself. Formerly fallow feelings suddenly sprawled onto the table, extending its legs and reaching out again.

With its gangly limbs unfolded, a trust in me sighed.

I hadn't considered that my own emotions had lost their faith in me - their faith to be actualized and held by my will. To be valued simply in recognition + expression.

In the park, a new muscle was exercised. This stretching had dormant volcanoes of assured rightness ready to erupt. And the recent trust I established in the library notified these feelings and instincts that I would bring them forward if given the insight to feel them in the first place.

I sit between two cardinals now, in friendly forests and mystical mountains. It's here that I start to draw these narratives together and observe their complementary nature.

In witnessing the expansion of my splendor and pouring it outside of my own head + heart, there was suddenly space for me to feel outraged and in blistering service to my own needs.

So often, when one feeling or notion is dismissed and deprived of the nutrients of expression, it falls inactive.

I think of the plants I used to prune. The overall impending growth dampened by less lively leaves, drafting energy to their dying domains with no real resurrection possible. Just draining other healthy sprouts.

I envisioned my emotions similarly. If one were casted out and caused to dwindle, without proper lopping or loving, it would suck life out of other feelings.

In the past, lopping has been my solution. And while it may have preserved nutrients for the whole, I was left with barren branches of my own bewitching intuition.

This episode has reminded me of my deep desire to feel all there is to feel, within + without. And in order to accomplish this, you must open every facet of yourself, enacting the balancing acts necessary. To open one chamber surely requires the counter chamber's awakening. With one, comes two. With grace, comes grit.

I offer my company in the stirring of contradicting complexities.

I offer my writings as an attempt to continue chamber cracking + spirit soothing.

I offer my own research in revelry + rage to serve as a catalyst for their inevitable harmony.