The Thoughts Behind My Name

Lauren.

Soft, smile.

Lauren. Exotic.

Strong Woman. New Woman. Ready Woman.

Grow to be happy, Strive to be unique, my daughter. Aim to

Strike

Fear in your enemies.

Use your crinkle-eye smile, to love your friends

Your button nose, to breathe the scent of life; Lavender-Roma Tomato.

Use your curious fingertips to trace the bark of a Manzanita bush, to stroke the kaleidoscope fur of a cat, to caress the iridescent fantasia of an abalone shell.

My Buddha Baby, grow.

Mischievous smile, slow glance.

Bedroom eyes.

Yes, you are a

Lauren.

 

Taste your childhood, too early to preserve, the details fading but the aurora still

sweet and warm in your mind.

A starchy Ube ice cream, dappled with laughter and briny tears.

This name is waiting, a roseate orchid blooming behind your heart.

 

Olde English.

Lauren Faye. You are a scripture in waiting, my darling.

Warmed honey rolling off a silver spoon.

The Crown of the celestial sky.

My Lauren Faye D. Ainslie, my fragrant Earl Grey tea.

There has never been a Lauren in the family before.

I give Lauren to my Buddha Baby, and she will go

Wherever there is sunlight.

Write your scripture in the sunlight, my darling,

Write your scripture, Lauren Faye.

Bovallstand

There is no ground.

Only rocks in a sea of dark sky.

Breath whistles past lips, ponytails

swing in the wind.

I am not on earth.

Up here

there are no busy streets, people, or homecoming dances.

There is only the wind, the bobbing boats, and

The sky.

We sit down and peer

Over the edge.

A pool, a jungle forest pool, that doesn’t belong on this spire

Slumbers in the mountainside. We spot another

And another

And another

Her breath and her heart live next to me but I am

Far away.

I do not see what she sees.

I see fairies float from trembling bluebells that clutch to rocks, I glimpse the abalone shell glow of a mermaids tail in the murky pool water, and a dragon’s wing dips into the chilly viking sea.

I am small in this big big world.

Shame and desperation to survive, to last, to impact. The view from this Olympus shows me my place. I will forget, like I always do, in a

moment.

 

Blood

It’s never anger.

Never rage, or infuriation.

It’s a leering garden of flames, blooming from a stone in the pit of my stomach.

Crescent shaped indents are engraved into the palm of my hands, like hot iron to skin.

Everything else doesn’t matter, everything else rises away like steam from a rolling boil.

My thoughts aren’t clouded over, they aren’t there, they aren’t present.

This burning, stinging, venomous ice has frozen my subconscious, and thoughts of flight never bubble to the surface.

There is only thoughts of movement. Only thoughts of action, until there are actions.

And the thoughts behind those actions is blood.

Whether it be brought by my fingernails and a feral snarl graced upon my lips, or brought by a snake that has replaced my tongue, poisoning and alienating all in it’s path,

I will always leave a mark.