The Slush

Moving on is like waiting
for two feet of snow to melt.

When it finally does you can walk through what's left
but it won't be pretty until Spring.

Airplanes

Sunrises let go too easily.
Sunsets hold on too long.
Airplanes chase both.

Different years. Different seasons.

It seems that I am all three.

Broken Brakes

I keep having this reoccurring dream.

I drive my car and the brakes don't work.

What an accurate 

representation of

how my heart works.

Haven't Slept Since You Left

he and she.

you and me.

father.

daughter.

i don't know

what other words to write with

or how to end a poem

about someone leaving and

trying to swallow

this hollow feeling. 

how do you walk the way that you do?

how do you ask God for the forgiveness that you do?

if i were him i would not forgive you

it's been so long

ive forgotten what you look like.

i don't need you.

(but i do)

i dont miss you

(if only you knew)

turns out, broken people attract broken people.

that's why the people i keep finding look 

so much like you.

Mama

I looked at her, clutching my chest.
"Mama, it hurts. How do you make it stop?"

She didn't respond for a while
and looked at me with eyes and a soul
that had been where I was, remembering
the first boy that broke her heart.

"Baby, you don't. Gotta feel it to heal it.
You will fall to the ground with this gravity he left you with
but that doesn't mean you won't get up again."

Ceilings

To the people who find themselves
           "loving too hard",
                 Keep on.
                    Don't stop.
                        Love strong.
                            Be smart with your heart.
                        Love intentionally.
                    We need people with ceilingless love.
                So, the people outside?
           They're wrong, dear.
Loving the way you do is nothing to be ashamed of.

Ghostless

I wake up.

Drink my coffee,
and feel lighter.

The ghost of you doesn't wake with me anymore.

Our Keys

I play our memories
like ivory keys
on the piano
I never learned how to play.

It comes out like a toddler hitting notes in no systematic way
but it is all too comforting to me.

Let's Talk

Dear everyone who has fallen into the rabbit hole of this blog,
  Hello. How are you? Good? Good. I've gotten some questions about the content and the basis of this blog. I want to be completely honest with you. This blog came to be for purely selfish reasons. Originally, I never intended to show this to anyone. This was to be a healing place, somewhere to process my feelings, good or bad. Somewhere to poetically vomit my thoughts. Since The Olive Branch was started I have learned that hiding my thoughts benefits no one. Don't get me wrong there are times to embrace the silent places but there are also very important times to come forth with our thoughts.
  With that being said, I would like to point out that writing is an art. Art is an expression of that person and the lenses they see the world through. I like to believe that everyone is an artist at heart. We all create in various ways, I believe expression should be the one thing that we can all honor. Honor the art, honor the artist. Let's create a culture of creative freedom.
  My blog is through my lenses. I'm in a season of healing and processing and learning, if that makes you uncomfortable then (insert the shrugging shoulders emoji). I believe in honesty and writing is where I can be most honest. If heartbreak, grief, redemption, and inspiration aren't your thing then this isn't for you. That's totally fine! Read things that empower and encourage you. With creative freedom in mind, let's agree to enable expression rather than judge each others differences.
  So dear reader, if you're still with me, come with me on this ride of healing and honesty and forgiveness.

                                                                         XOXO
                                                                              -Syd

Extinguish

Looking into your eyes was

like ignoring a house, on fire.

There was smoke.

There were signs.

I just didn't take the time to reach for the extinguisher.

Only to find you took the time to reach for her.

Cling to her.

Lean to her.

For oxygen.

How can I be mad at you for trying to survive your own arson?

Float With Me

And you can look at me

and tell me 

all the reasons

I should stirve to be as 

steady as seven anchors

at the bottom of the ocean.

That is not me.

I can be as weightless as I want to be.

Maybe, eventually, I'll find someone to float with me.

Shining

They looked at her like 

she was a few steps

from shining.

She was a few endless nights,

with tears and mascara running down her face,

from a shot at some healing.

If anyone needed hope, it was her.

Hope would be the thing to save her

because she had seen things

no one with a beating heart and shaky hands

should see.

Hope would heal her.

And, love.

Love would bring the bandaids she didn't know

she would need. 

Then she would heal, one step at a time.

And find herself falling into courage.

Then, when they saw her, they would see.

She has fought to be

and she never stopped shining. 

To Every Man I Have Ever Loved

I won't get over you any time soon,
don't ask me to.

It's not fair of you to expect that of me.

I am not a tree or even a cup of coffee; strong and confidant,
when it comes to you.

But don't be dismayed.
Progress is being made.

But I still miss our 3 am talks
and river-flowing adventures.

So I hope your new job is fulfilling
and your new girlfriend is willing
to touch your scars with safety.

And if i'm one of those wounds,
I pray she let you heal long enough
to forgive my rough heart
and the way it tore itself apart
loving you.

Geting There

Take my heart and make it new.
Teach it to trust in you.
You see, she's been through flames,
put through shame,
done some reckless things
I'd rather not claim.

So forgive me when I hesitate
to hand her to you.

I've had to stitch and pick her up time and time again.

So yes, I confess.

I'm a bit protective of her.
I'm sorry.
That's not all of me.
I would really like to be free.

I'm getting there.
I'm just scared.

Cause your hands look like vaults
and I know they won't drop me.

The one thing that's scary,
that stands in the way.
You make me happy.
I don't know if I could fix her again
if that was taken away.

Freedom and Forgiveness

This is the last time I
will write
about you.

Don't go looking for
your name on my lips.
They're learning new songs of
freedom and forgiveness
because those are the things
that I want to be.

I can't do that if i'm digging my nails into your memory.

Dear, I release you from here.
From the room in my mind
associated with love and logic.

But this doesn't mean I won't think of you from time to time.
I am just a woman caught
between fortified cities and
the temptation to call on the
wolves that raised you to be
defensive and wild.

But I am tired of howling after you.

So this is the last time I
will write about about you,
hoping that you will
write about me, too.

The Undoing

Every now and then
I come a little bit undone.

Wading through the process,
waiting to see what this will become.

Maybe a door that leads to
more than I have ever expected.

Whatever may come,
whatever the season,
I will find joy in the littlest reasons.

Cheers to the End

I will do this for the one who grazed
the top of their dreams with their
calloused fingertips.

I will do this for my mother who
left her dreams in the basement of
her childhood home to collect
cobwebs.

I will do this for my grandmother
who wanted to be a nurse
but was told no.

I will do it for all the women
who look like me.
Skin the color of trees and the women
who have stood when they were told
to sit down.

The ones with hearts messier and thirstier than most.
The ones with wild eyes and fierce dreams.

Ladies, let me tell you.
   Stay messy.
              thirsty,
                    loud,
                       and sincere.

The world will tell you that's not ladylike.

You have no obligation to them.

So I will do this for all of you.
The tigers in hiding.
The ones with swords for tounges that
are told to be quiet.

This is for you.
This is us cheering to the end of your dying.

Wake up, sisters.
It's time to live.

Process

With the sidewalks and the streets
that are continually being redone,
repaved, or refinished
my hope finds me again.

If people can walk
all over them, if cars can drag themselves
across them and remain strong I venture
to say I can, too.

Roads are always in process, as are we.

I could be cracked but I am still here
in process.

That, in itself, is a victory.

Songs Like That

Everyone's songs always sound
more melodic.
They sound eloquently constructed.

Always more than mine.

Maybe that's because I wasn't there
to watch those songs grow
in the depths of the them.

Songs like that don't come from
fragile people.

Maybe that's why I like them.
I am not fragile, myself.

Dandelion Smoke

He bragged about how much he could smoke.
So much to the point where he turned into
a weed.


Weeds always choke flowers
which explains why I couldn't
breathe with him.


I have no time for weeds
but sometimes they look like dandelions
and I get distracted.

Pockets

Have you noticed the hearts of the broken?
Have you noticed the hearts of the broken
who know they're broken?

They're not afraid of their edges or their shards.
They're not afraid of their stories that carry
hurts like old receipts they find in their pockets.

They just pull them out and acknowledge
their contribution to the adventure of their lives.

Just a reminder.
Brokenness is not all that you are.
Maybe it is something you carry in your pockets.

You are deeper than your pockets.

The Melody

My words are tired and
so are my feet, taking
steps like robbers
that don't belong to me.

So if you give me rest
I will sing you a symphony.

It will sound like a song that
was yours all along,
you just didn't know the words
or the melody.

So give me rest
and I will sing you back to you.

Three Hours

Stand by the river
and wish for the sea.
There is always somewhere else
we wish to be.
Right now I miss where
I felt best.
You next to me, under the
mountains, and three hours
from the sea.

Ship Wrecked

Her words were like water to me.
I wanted to hold them in my hand
but they always slipped through my fingers.

I wanted to believe they would
hold me up like a ship but all they've done
is let me drown.

I want to believe that I can trust them
but I can't say that when I never
learned to swim and always
have to wear a life jacket
when she's around.

Lunar

Your eyes are what I imagine moons would look like
if they never broke.
If moons never cratered.
If moons didn't disappear in the day.
Your eyes would light up my dark
and help me carry my dreams until
the sun rose.
I howl every time I see your eyes.
They draw out the wolf in me
and I am not afraid.
We are lunar.

Blood

I see the world in my brother's eyes,
the ocean in his heart.
He stands on tree roots
with cascading conviction.
He is all the things I am not
and everything I want to be.

Grenade Girl

She had a certain kind of heaviness about her.
The kind of heaviness you could see in her eyes.
Like she'd seen wars and
held grenades in her hands.
And the only thing
holding her body together was the sheer
hope that someday love would look her
in the eye and say "it's time."
Before the explosion.

They Tell Me

They tell me to stop letting you melt into
my poetry.
They say I should
stop letting you sit on my skin.
I wish I could.
But I keep running into
my heart and her shaking hands
that hold our polaroids.

Oh, to ignore her.
But I don't.

I sit and I reminisce and
I fall back into the dream of you.

It's hard to climb out because you loved me so well there.
So I climb and I fall, over and over.

Can someone tell me if I've crashed yet?

Risk

We are created to go out on a limb,

to be the limb.

We are the branches and he is the vine.

We were created to take chances on ourselves.  

To put ourselves out there.

To grab fruit off of a branch requires stretching.

Stretching of self.

Stretching of faith. 

Stretching of our hearts.

And our hearts have not been called to the sidelines.

We have not been called to sit beside and watch

the world go by.

Life is not a spectator sport.

Discrediting who you are and trying to shrink yourself 

is not a passport to escape this life with as little casualties as possible.

The goal of life isn’t to jump through hoops and try not to feel.

Being strong doesn’t mean going through life unhurt.

Being strong means going through life with an open heart.

Open hearts demand risk.

Be you and don’t be afraid of

the God given zeal that will ooze out of you.

Don’t apologize for the way your soul sees the world.

Don’t back down from your brokenness.

Be you.

Own it and run with it.

Love fiercely.

Feel deeply.

And create anything your heart has ever dreamed of.

And it might be a little messy and it might get a little

out of control.

But this is a lesson I have to keep re-learning.

Is that life was not penciled in perfect ballpoint lines.

When God made the universe I can guarantee lines were the last thing

he was worried about.

Have you ever watched an artist paint and been amazed that the 

once empty canvas now carries a million stories?

That was God creating the universe,

the heavens,

and you.

He took a paint brush, bottled up his imagination, 

and watched as you began to take form. 

You are his dream. 

You are not random. 

You are not something to be taken lightly. 

He was incredibly passionate and intentional when he created you. 

You have a million stories wrapped up in you

and they're not going to look like any body else’s. 

Write, paint, design create.

Do whatever awakens your soul

and don’t be afraid of it.

Create. 

Because you showcase a face of God only

you could show.

God looks different to every single person and thats

the beauty of it.

We were created in his image and yet

no two people have the same fingerprints.

So…

The moral of my story.

The reason of my rhyme.

Being you is the greatest gift you can give

and the world is waiting for your story.

Heroine

The girl whose heart is too big for her body
wants strength, bravery, and love.
She has everything she wants but doesn't see.
She carries the hearts of millions into a
war zone and never lets go.
She was born heroic.

Paris in the Rain

We sat there looking at each other.
Wondering but not speaking.
Feeling but denying.
His eyes carried so much hurt.
When I asked him who he was
he could not answer me.

There is something so dangerous about
giving the most important parts of yourself
to people who try their very best to shield
you from who they are.

To be truthful, there is nothing in him that I could not handle.

But here I am.
Sitting alone.

Wondering if this is what Paris in the rain feels like.

The city of love, dripping in a
coldness you can't shake.

And a yearning for a warmth from
someone you don't know like you thought
you did.

Don't.

Don't apologize for the way your soul sees the world.
Don't back down from your brokeness.
How many times have you
split your self open in the
deepest parts of the night
and admired the constellations
your journey has become?

You, sweet sister, are a galaxy
and a thousand adventure novels
and a big boquet of roses wrapped up into
one.

Don't hold back your breath
if you are afraid of incinerating
the rest of us.

To be honest most of us are waiting
to be lit on fire
for something.
Anything.

I can't imagine a better reason to burn
than for everything that you are.

Shelters and Storms

He hadn't met a girl who felt
everything so heavily before.
You could tell he was afraid.

Everything he had known
disintegrated at his touch.
Every person he had loved was
as airy and unpredictable as the wind.

But her.


She was a shelter in all of
his thunderstorms.
Somewhere he could be free.

But freedom to a captive feels
a lot like quick sand.
So we will see how long it takes him to find out
that his shelter is
me.

New York

I wondered, while riding in, if the city was built on broken rocks or
broken backs...or both.
Either way.


Did people see them as stepping stones or sacrifices?
Was the city split into mourners and politicians?


Is being the city that never sleeps worth losing
all rest that ever was?
Or are we insomniacs trying to escape the haunting
truth that waits for us in our dreams?

Smoke and Roses.

You can still smell roses even when they're dying.
You can still breathe in smoke when
the fire has been reduced to ash.
I can't wait to be loved the way
I am meant to be loved.
Because right now my heart is smoke and roses.
You can smell the fire
but you can tell it's dying.

Breathless

During my week, day to day, I am exhausted.
Breathless.
Gasping for an extraction of tension.

When I touch the sea?
I am awake.
I am at peace.
Time stops
and I have no recollection of anguish.
Jesus makes me feel the same way.

What did I ever do before the ocean?

When Queens go to War.

Shots fired. Canons released. 

These are the sounds that are familiar to me.

Because we have been fighting since the day we were born.

Fighting for peace.

Fighting for justice.

Fighting for things worth fighting for.

When we go to war we may not have swords and shields to lead us in

but our words and our passion put us at the front of the battle field.

We spent a time studying kings and putting into context what they stood for.

This is not about them.

This isn’t about kings or armor bearers.

This is about when queens go to war.

One morning I was opening at work.

Trying to understand why the world is the way that it is.

Why poverty has the face of a woman and the compassion of a thief.

Why, according to the United Nations Development Program, 70% of the worlds poor are women.

70%.

This alone keeps me up at night.

This 70% wont let me sleep.

Maybe it’s because I can feel their fire burning in me or maybe it’s because I have the perfect opportunity to speak.

It’s like we have this untapped resource, bursting at the seams.

It’s like we have a secret weapon we leave on the shelf because we don’t exactly know what it means.

Desmond Tutu once said, “If we are going to see real development in the world than our best investment is women.”

I think it’s time we start investing in good stock.

Let me venture to say that we did not start out this way.

Eve wasn’t born a slave but a woman.

She was created and that’s when things started to change. 

Esther’s weapon was her voice.

With it she saved her people.

Mrs. Proverbs 31 was a homemaker, business woman, and wife.

Imagine telling any of these women their duty was

“to be seen and not heard.” and how well that would’ve gone over.

Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Harriet Tubman.

You don’t hear these names and think poor.

I bet you thought fighter and remembered the legacy they left behind.

I wish I could sit down with world leaders and policy makers.

Maybe one day we could have dinner.

We would make small talk and I would compliment the chef.

And after a while I would stake my claim. 

I would say,” I don’t want to tell you how to do your job because you’re doing so well.

But I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I have some suggestions.”

I would tell them about my mother and how strong she is.

And how she works 60 hours a week to provide and is still ashamed

of the lack.

How this world has led her to believe that Adam keeps asking for his rib back.

The definition of poverty is “to be inferior or insufficient in amount.”

And right now women are insufficient in equality,

even though we have been fighting since before we could breathe.

If speaking and taking action means that our future daughters won’t have to start on their knees than sign me up.

And I hope you’ll agree.

Because Jesus didn’t lock us into “the lesser.” 

He wants us to be free and lose ourselves in his love.

He wants us to walk in who he has created us to be.

He has created us to be queens.

Colors.

You wanted me to color in the lines
but all I could do was bleed watercolor outside
of your boundaries.
But Jesus loves my bleeding
because He bled first.
He does not see it as something to be ashamed of
so I will go on bleeding and watch the colors
drip down the canvas.
It will be pretty shades of purples
and blues deeper than the ocean.
Greens that will grow around the viewers soul
like the trees in the mountains and a little
bit of yellow to remind them that the sun
will always rise.

Hurting

"You wouldn't understand."
The words he left us with.
Frankly, I dont think anyone understands those three words.
So basically we don't understand.
We just hurt.

Sinking House

Loving you wasn't destruction.
It wasn't catastrophic or even deprivation.
It was just erosion.
We built a house on a hill and let it sink into the sea.
It was so gradual we barely noticed until
we were completely drenched.
I sank quicker than you.
I don't know what that says about you or me.
I think what bothers me most is how you didn't
even try to save me.