Shine

When I was in the fourth grade,

I had to go to school with a brand new,

black and blue accessory.

A big fat lip.

Teachers and pupils alike

would cock their heads to one side and ask,

“what happened to you? Why is your lip bruised?”

Oh nothing, I would say.

I fell off my bike.

Or

I had a crazy dream about a magic carpet

and fell out the top bunk.

Or

I fought the school bully and won,

and she was only able to swing one punch

before I creamed her.

I was out late at light wrestling wolves in my backyard

after a night of running toward the moon

and howling at Orion's belt.

I saved a family of drowning deer by stretching my body

across a raging river,

and those deer weren't very careful with their feet.

I climbed Everest in a hailstorm,

The turbulence in my rocket ship to the moon was pretty rough,

I lent my face to a group of bees

who only knew how to dance on lips,

God Himself reached down from the heavens,

to kiss me right on the mouth,

forgetting how small I was compared to Him.

What really happened to my black and blue lip

in the fourth grade?

My tiny freckled body was just at the wrong place,

at the wrong time

like too often children are,

and my own mother bounced my face off a sliding glass window.

Her bony and sleepy fingers on the back of my neck,

was burning hot,

made me feel like a baby calf being branded.

And after my teeth met glass,

and I couldn't believe the blood pooling in the palm of my hand,

was mine.

But I know there was nothing harder,

than trying to raise a son and three daughters

when your husband is your own personal prison warden.

See, my father loved my mother

like he loved a punching bag.

Her heart was his dartboard,

and after so many darts,

you just can't feel your heart anymore.

And you hurt the ones you love,

no matter how helpless.

I know how that goes, momma.

By now I'm an expert.
I know that if hearts really did break when they were broken,

mine would be gun powder.

And yours might be flour.
And our guns and cupcakes were loud,

but my father's anger was louder.

Listen.

I forgive you.

Because every punch is a poem,

and every poem is reprieve

and every reprieve is forgiveness.

And sometimes words from a nine year old girl with a fat lip

are heavier than a dying star.

But we are not dead yet,

so don't lay down like you are.

Shine.

Shine like Andromeda just got a new haircut,

and is dancing to salsa music and sipping wine

out of the big dipper.

Shine like you just got your braces off.
Shine like you have enough rocket fuel to reach to the moon,

and you still got more.

Shine like the cute girl in class just got a locker assigned next to yours.

Shine like you finally realize you don't have to hide your scars,

or your cellulite

or your pubic hair.

But, don't shine like the fireworks on the fourth of July,

shine like the fireflies

who were still not embarrassed to light up among them.

Shine like you have no where left to go.

Because we will always wrestle wolves in the night.

And you will always be my mother,

and I know we were never meant to save each other,

but the bees will dance on our lips,

and we will always have a way of seeing home

like we were looking at it from the moon.

Our poems are forgiveness,
and my father is a different story,

but, mom, I forgive you.

Delete this if I die.

Delete this if I die.

Before she left I asked her,

“kiss me.”

What I wish I would have said was,

kiss me everywhere.

Kiss my eyelids
kiss my fingernails
kiss the the scars on my arms
kiss the part inside where my knee bends.
Kiss the marrow in my bones,

the air in my lungs,
and kiss the tendons that hold it all together.

I want your lips on every inch of me.
I want my body to be the hiking trails
for your mouth.
I want your lips to graze over my cellulite mountains
and my stretch mark rivers.

I want your tongue to read my goosebumps like braille.


Because your lips are the Sunday morning I spent in bed,

when I should have been in church.
Your lips are the moment lighting meets sand
to make the stained glass in the windows,

that I want you and I to shatter.

Your lips are the moment I forget to breathe.
And I want your lips them all over me.

You are a woman I really like
And by like

I mean your wind stripped the shingles off my roof.
And I thought your tornado to be sweet.
It ripped me apart,

but made the sound of a moth fluttering around a light bulb.
Your tornado tore my identity to shreds,
and it was better than heroin.

And if my friends knew,

I'd be burned at the stake.

But I don't give a fuck now,

because you have set me on fire.

Set me on fire, baby.
I want to be ashes spread across your bones.
Because I'd rather be ashes than to never know
what it was like to have your body on top of mine.

And I'm glad I do.

Red

The sun burst through that morning as if it nothing to hide. “I am the sun.” it said with such vengeance and pride, my heart skipped a beat. I clutched my left nipple ring, as I often do, when I think about the way your body looked in your red pea coat. The way your body looked in that pea coat at the Tuesday afternoon meeting. You were unapologetic, just like that six in the morning sun. The way you spoke through your red lips absolutely set me on fire. Now, though, you speak nothing to me through those lips. And the silence is like a jail cell. I ache to set them free. I ache to part your lips, help you speak with my tongue on yours. I think our taste buds would rub together like fingers on braille and the words would float into the sky like a bird takes flight for the first time; so wild and free and orgasmic. Your body would become a kingdom at which I am merely a peasant, yet I would make use of every part of it. I would dress up the living room, make cozy the guest room, and I would fuck the living day lights out of you in our bedroom.

I would touch every bit of you. You would whisper my name at every square inch. Your red lip stick would have since evaporated away, but I still know those lips. Those lips are my pipe dream, my main artery, my soul. Like the wings of Samothrace. Your winged victory ignited this world. This passion. My clit.

My part swollen and crying and only, you left. You left. You left. Not the way a bird leaves slowly and patiently. Not the way the leaves fall gently from the trees of Autumn. You left like doors slammed shut, like glass breaking, like me carving “unloved” into my upper thigh with my Swiss army knife the night I couldn't sleep. You left like the way a house burns down unexpectedly, or a heart stops for no apparent reason. You left. And with you, took much of me.

You are only a smoke signal of a memory I can barely hold on to. Mainly because it never happened. The phrase, “I still love you” marks the novel of my everyday. Like a cobweb of my bones, they are settled in the crevasse of my everything. I push my tender legs through life, still. I wake up, I go to work, I come home, I cook dinner, I go to bed with a book and a miller light. But you still manage to seep your way into the margins. I didn't ask, though, you leak in. You are nothing but a dirty syringe. I found you in the pocket of a drunk. I touched you gently, you were smooth to the touch, and nearly painless to my skin. But, when I injected you, God sent me straight to hell on a rickety old railroad cart.

The problem was, that railroad cart vibrated against me in just the right way. Your sin, your evil, your war, touched me only in slight jest, how could I have known the difference? Your lips where a holocaust disguised as a sunrise.

How was I to know?

Merely a human being on a earth of deities. Merely a slave to your every breath. How. How was I to know? I am a big girl, yet have proved to be so weak in the flesh of my own body. The skin, the organs the sinew, in which I live with everyday. I have somehow managed to be captive of my very own self. To my very own name. A slave. A slave. A slave.

And a slave never hears freedoms brush across her ears like the cool breeze of today. A slave is shackled, torn apart, unloved. A slave bows down to the very essence in which she hates.

But, there is a twinge of hope that rests between my lower abdomen and my diaphragm. I can barely feel it, as it is the size of a mustard seed. It only barely sometimes scrapes up against me. Causing my nerve endings to rustle like wind blowing through a soy field. So slight. Almost unnoticed. These words:

what is a servant, but a slave? 

Grace & LGBT communities 101.

A guide for Christians being friends with the LGBT community.

When someone tells you that they are gay for the first time:

1. Do not immediately tell them you think it's wrong. No matter how nice you're saying it. It's not nice, and that isn't what they were asking you.
2. Be their friend. They aren't going to drag you into their "agenda" or "lifestyle" or whatever else word you're using for it these days.
3. They aren't telling you because they have a crush on you. Seriously. Get over yourself. You're not that cute.
4. Don't act shocked. The attraction to members of the same sex is not new, it's fairly common, and most people will experience it at one time or another. If you react like they just told you are actually from a different planet, you will immediately make them feel uncomfortable in their own skin. Don't do that.
5. If you actually are shocked, get out of your christian bubble for a few months. Learn to interact with people who don't believe the exact same things as you. Get to know a person.
6. Don't abandon their friendship be you are afraid, disgusted or whatever else. If that's the case, you need to get your shit together.
7. If you do need some space because you are afraid, let them know gently. But do NOT make it their fault. This is now your responsibility to deal with. Not theirs.
8. Don't assume they are telling you because they are 100% out and ok about it. Coming out is terrifying, confusing, and not all LGBT folks KNOW if what they are doing is right or wrong. At the most, they just know what it is. Let them be where they are at. Don't push them one way or another.
9. Do NOT also assume they are telling you because they are struggling and they want to stop "their heathen lifestyle" unless they specifically ask to hold you accountable.
10. Please meet their significant others. Please.
11. NEVER out another person even if they came out to you. That is not your job. No matter how much you think it helps. It doesn't. It's violating.
12. Love them, still. I know it's confusing. You may not understand. But when have you ever really understood everything about people? Never. Being gay is no different. Don't treat it like it is.
13. It's ok to ask questions if you don't understand. But be genuine in your non understanding. Don't use passive aggressive questions to prove a point.
14. Love, Love, Love.

The reason I know these things, is because I am officially sharing with the world that yes, I find myself attracted to members of my own sex. No, I don't know if it's right or wrong. Yes, I'm terrified. And yes, I have prayed every night since I was in 8th grade for it to go away. And it didn't. And it hurts more to hold it in than to bravely face possible judgement, harshness, or otherwise rude behavior.

To those who I have told and who have still loved me, thank you. And thank you for letting me be where I'm at.

Love, Erica

There is more shame than falling for a person of my own sex in one other thing.  in desiring for the last feeling I ever feel is cold metal against my skull.

Ohio, again.

Today, is my last day here at Rocky Mountain Pathways Ranch. I'll say the cliche part first: I cannot believe it's already over.

This experience has been one of the most challenging yet beautiful experiences of my life. I find myself constantly astounded on what high school students can teach a person about life. So raw. Uninhibited. Hilarious. Gentle. These amazing beings bursting into bloom. Honored does not begin to describe how I feel about the fact that I got to work with them for these past six months. I never thought a rag-tag, crazy group of high school students from LA could literally drag out the best parts of me right to surface. It was truly incredible.

Colorado, however beautiful kicked my ass while I was here. If you've followed my journey, there was homelessness, poverty, depression, and a coming out. My life changed in ways I could not ever of dreamed of when I was packing my Honda Civic and driving 1,000 miles to be with the mountains- what I considered (and still do) my soul to be made of.

When I got to Denver, God tore me apart.

But, God damn I learned so much. I learned how brokenness is beautiful. And how to stand up for myself. And how certain I am that God will never let me go. Even when I ask Him to. I learned the goodness of others can turn your insides into feathers, and how the gentle snow across mountain peaks can rip your rib cage wide open, exposing your beating heart to the world. I learned that it's OK to say "I don't know" even when the question pertains to your identity. I truly felt how Adam and Eve felt in the garden when they first discovered their nakedness. I learned that nakedness isn't always a bad thing. And I learned that in this insane, brutally beautiful world- we will receive gifts we never deserved. Shit.

As I reflect back to the Great Colorado Adventure, I would like to share with you something. During our programming at the ranch, we ask our students to write a letter to themselves to read 3 months from now. I did one for myself, as well. Here's what it said:

Dear you,

Right now you're in your second week and you're loving it. Relating to students, laughing with them- being their role model. Just what you desired. You wanted to move to Colorado to be in the mountains and to have a job which helps people. And you DID. It's exactly what you've been praying for since you started praying. Remember: God is good. Not just right now because you're happy and satisfied. Chase after Him.

Remember also why you are here. For the students. You are a have been a light to them. This responsibility is enormous and one of the greatest gifts you could ever be given.

Erica, do you remember when you were in Denver? Broke, lonely depressed, hating God...life...everything? Look where you are now. God honored your perseverance and waiting and HE WILL AGAIN.

You are funny, loving and God put you here for a reason. To relate to these students. Because you can and you will. This means you have purpose in your life. You will feel purposless again. You will make mistakes again. You will be mad at God again. Keep trucking. It will come and so will He.

God has made you ERICA LYNDSEY REESE. For this what you are doing NOW......ROCK IT. God wants you alive today.

-Erica Reese October 5th 2012.

Dang.

I remember these things as I embark back to Ohio. I will remember that I have purpose. Always. I will remember that God will not let go, even when I tell Him to fuck off right to His face. I will remember to keep trucking. I will remember to be naked. I will remember to feel the feathers and to feel my heart beating. I will remember the mountains and I will remember that I will be back, again, soon.

But for now, it's the season of Ohio, again. Not what I expected, but when do plans ever really turn out the way you think they do?

in that order.

1. Try not to fall in love.
2. Fall in love.
3. Move to Colorado.