The wind moves, and things move in it.

Eight and Two

Here's the thing: I walked away, back
straight and ready for the blade that sunk hilt
deep into the base of a ramrod spine, walked
away and tried my hardest to not
look back or raise my hand to stem the tide of blood. Watch
the way I move, stiff
and stilted, like there is still
something left unhealed, not
all the time but often enough, one knee
gone out from me, paralytic, weak and wounded
down one side, and I limp, but less with every year that passes.
I walked away, brother, walked of my own free will,
and I have payed my blood debts, and I
will heal and rise again.

Helloooo.

So I was going through my livejournal looking for a poem the other day (shut up), which involved trudging back through the archives all the way back to the beginning, because I was pretty sure it was an early piece of writing. This was like two weeks ago, and I noticed idly that hey, January is when my livejournal started ages back, I should totally mark that occasion. Today I was sitting at work, writing dates on things, and thought, hey, the 23rd sounds familiar, why is that? Took a look on my phone at lunch, and confirmed what I'd already suspected.

I do love anniversaries. 

So it's been eight years since I first started. I would have been about sixteen; if you're at all interested, the first post is here. I hadn't quite learned to drive, I spent a lot of time with my horse, I was a less than a month away from my whole life cracking down around my ears. I went by Talia, and I picked this username because none of the other ones I wanted were available. I originally write on melodramatic.com, which I never properly learned to use, and switched over to follow Cristina and Heather and also because I was totally hopeless at using the system. 

My pony has since been sent to retirement; in the end, he was mine for a little over eight years and I love him still, and miss him like I'd miss my heart. I plan on a tattoo of his brand come spring, once I've gotten the dermatillomania I've struggled with since I was a kid under a sort of control. I don't drive, but that's because I don't have a car these days because I live in Somerville, and my partner drives me where I need to go. (If I ask nice.) 

I'm still small, still five feet, and my hair is brown and just brushing my shoulders. I've grown into a stocky young woman, broad across the ribs and shoulders by genetics and a little curvy by good living. I'm called Grace, mostly, or Edie, or Mama Hyena or Boss Mare or Bones. I sing less than I should but better than I used to. I dance contra with skill and grace and a sincere and total joy, have learned waltzing and blues and a little bit of tango. 

I sidled my way out of the closet starting not long after I joined, part by coaxing and part by being dragged, part by manipulation and part by my own free will. I identify variously as a dyke, a queer woman, and a lesbian; I've been through six partners of varying seriousnesses and genders, and am currently living with and crazy for a transguy named Mitch. He's my world. He's my femme and I'm his butch. 

I don't talk much to Sean anymore but I miss him; formal dances are now an opportunity for hilarity and to dance with pretty girls. I'm currently read The Kingkiller Chronicles, Lord of Light, and the Shoebox Project. I still love Pratchett and Pierce, but Lackey and Atwater-Rhodes are increasingly obvious as the semi-schlocky fantasy they are. 

I'm graduated from 4-H (and high school and college), but I still teach and judge public speaking, supervise horse bowl and hippology, regularly work with members of my old club, and help run and judge horse shows. I'm over a year into my first job, at a medical journal; I commute to work daily and probably don't sleep enough. I do aerial acrobatics and am learning to paint. I'm a poet, and finally starting to examine my work for the best of it to send out to literary journals. 

I am almost eight years past Cristina, who was my first girlfriend. I didn't call her that at the time, but looking back, I can accept that's what she was. I'm probably as close as I can come to peace with what happened, and how shattered it left me. I've gotten some good poetry out of it, at the very least, and I suppose that's good. 

I'm settled as a female spotted hyena, I am horse-hearted. My totems are Cougar, Badger, and Bear. Inside my head, I talk to a Utahraptor named Red and a genderqueer person named Ruth. 

I currently live a life of Sherlock and Skyrim. 

I'm very happy. 

Aubade (in progress)

My lover makes me breakfast in the dark, four
a.m., me shivering in boots
and breeches, the sun not even up, helmet
tucked between my knees and hair half-braided. 

(And her in flannel shirt and pants, a blanket
wrapped around her shoulders,
squinting without glasses into oatmeal
coming to a boil.)


--

I've been working with variations on the first line, tossing it around in an idle fashion, for a while now (one is here). This is the farthest I've gotten with it, and if it works out I'm planning a companion piece called Evensong. I think this is still very rough. There's another stanza or two that I don't know yet. 

Last night I threw myself at the silks as if climbing them would erase the last ten days. My feet are bruised, the muscling of my shoulders and knees strained, my hands rough with half-formed callouses. For an hour it didn't matter that my grandmother died, that my father asked me to be a pallbearer and I feel like I'm too small and awkward for it but I want to do this thing for him, that people called my job and yelled all day on Friday, that I keep breaking down at weird moments and can't cope with anything more difficult that deciding what to have for lunch, and sometimes not even that--it was just me and the silk wrapped around my wrists and hips, the mat beneath my bare feet, the worn boards of the ceiling inches above my head. 

It was the first time in fourteen weeks of lessons that I'd done a hip key perfectly, managed most of an invert, done a fairy descent all the way down, climbed on my bad ankle halfway up the silks, got all the way up into a Rebecca Split, the fabric pressed hard all down the middle of my body.

And yes, my heart is aching, and yes, I am exhausted, but I finally feel better.

Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Upon request, I will post a random line or two from any of these you choose. Assuming that the file adds up to a full line, that is.

Feel free to request as many times as you wish, and it's okay to ask for the same file more than once.

(Cherry picking the best, because guys, I have hundreds. Some are poems.)

1. Stardarkhistory
2. Annie Majesty 
3. Children of God
4. Oslo
5. Things You Should Know About Westford
6. Death We Are
7. Secret of the Sphinx
8. nagacreationmyth
9. electricity
10. Inaugeration
11. Beltane
12. Zaia and the Magpie
13. Hawk-Eyed
14. petgirl/petgirl_weres
15. The Unicorn Defense

 Halfway down a piss-poor beer, belly empty and knees
weak beneath me, head already pounding, three quarters
of the winding way to drunk, a Tuesday in the summer, everything
catching up to me at once--home and the day steaming brutal behind me
like smoke rising from a ruined car, tears
rainbowed like coolant on the sunwarm pavement, everything
in pieces. Let
it go. Let it go.

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I have noooo idea how this got here.

 Heavy little warhorse, standing foursquare
on rocky ground, impassive
as the stone around her, head like an anvil, legs
like young trees. She
has never been a beast of burden, never known
the hand upon the rein. Shay. Buff-colored
as the sand beneath her hooves. She is
the wind that strikes your face, the storms
that break along the steppes---as ruthless
and innocent as every wild thing.

 1. Virgin in Headlights (Edie)

In one motion the door open and
my bag thrown, back hitting soft, swinging 
my legs in and settling
hips and shoulders against
the seat with the rocking swing

[Error: unknown template qotd]
Ohhh yes I do. And not just straight sex, but LGBT sex. It took until I was in college to really work out what the hell was going on with my desires, and how to act on them, in a safe and sane manner. I wasn't taught about healthy queer relationships or coming out or dental dams or anything. We didn't even particularly learn much about straight sex! And I had a fairly well-done sex-ed curriculum.