Every month is pride month in my house
Because it has to be
The flags have never come down
Never creased into a cardboard closet prison
Dragging myself out the door every morning
Determined to create my own happiness
While others take up arms in a battle
Tearing apart families like the one we dream of
She comes home to the smell of onion tears
And garlic kisses
I pour her wine
this is our celebration
The music is a loud kitchen chorus
The windows are cracked open
Crooning notes of joy and pain
My wife and I dance to it while we make pasta
Chambers more intimate than any parade
Worship, sacrifice, covenant, containment
Holy crusaders, golden lips and velvet skin
A chalice, a crest, keys and treasuries
20 baseball caps linger on the wall
An armory awaiting unrest
The only sword we have is love
And a Bowie knife
The soft couch where she holds me
A testament to proud protection
An oasis in her cologne
She thumbs at my wedding band
A space alive with intensity
Our sacred bond not easily broken
If we are Lucky to exist when we do
Then why am I so afraid to lose it all ?
About the Creator
Jessica Hansen
Golden state based copywriter and k-12 writing instructor. Proud French and English Bulldog mom still oozing with newlywed bliss. Raised on C.S. Lewis, R.L. Stein, and Frank Herbert. Runs on dad jokes and spicy margs.
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More stories from Jessica Hansen and writers in Poets and other communities.
Angel
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Lex scrunched her eyes to try and make out the full shape of the cabin through the small specks of snow falling in front of her. She knew this spot on the trail used to belong to a trail angel- a safe rest spot created for weary backpackers, but she was almost certain that this one had been cleared out for years. At least, that’s what she recalled from her reading in preparation for this leg of the trip.
By Jessica Hansen2 years ago in Horror
A Flower Song
Apparently the Aztecs, Toltecs, Chichimecs and other Mexica were crazy about poetry. Despite the book-burning, slaughter, and epidemics that characterized the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the empires of Mexico, some hundreds of poems from the height of their tradition come down to us in Classical Nahuatl, preserved by Nahua and Spanish scholars of the 16th century. One of the most famous poets, Nezahualcoyotl, was a sage-king who opposed the cult of human sacrifice associated with Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror, and favored Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Flowers and feathers were the favorite offering of the Plumed Serpent. Moreover, flowers and feathers are a metaphor for poetry. Individual words, scattered petals, the down of tropical birds. The temples of blood sacrifice could be transformed into temples of flower and song. A sublimated offering to the Heart of Earth and the Heart of Sky encapsulated in the Classical Nahuatl kenning for poetry: in xōchitl in cuīcatl, meaning, "the flower and the song." The following poem is part of a longer work, and is in a state of flux, so take the waters as they flow:
By Rob Angeli3 days ago in Poets
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