Remember who you are. I heard this last week, or the week before. Remember who I am. A cacophony of sounds, and smells, and words, and textures, and lullabies I can never seem to remember. Remember who I am. Unfinished anthologies, painted over portraits, haikus, a cracked sculpture lined with gold. The scent of cinnamon, the feeling of gravel under bare toes, the sun’s heat on skin, the brisk wind on chilled cheeks, the crunch of sand that’s made its way in between teeth.
A drop of lemon juice, a cry of joy caught in my gut, bird songs with no bird in sight. I am both the new growth of Spring, and the wilted leaf that’s held on all winter.
Last night, the pillow was too flat for my neck, the vision found me anyway. Deep purples, yellows, fuschia, and green outlined radiant shapes bouncing across my peripheral. For a brief moment I wondered how the darkness transformed to color so quickly, without a dream to hold the spectacle together. Then, I decided not to care. I settled into the blessing of light and for the first night in months slept through the night.
I was listening to a horoscope reading this morning. The astrologer pulled a card with a sun. In jubilance, he told us his mentor taught him when a sun is pulled the reading is over. “Everything will work out,” he said. With those words & minutes still remaining, the app crashed and pulled me out of the reading. The message walked me from the kitchen to my desk, where I now write these words.
There’s pressure in perfection, so I surrender to the flaws. Enamored by them really. To the process rather than the product. To the dried glue peeling on my hands, the splotches of green and blue acrylic paint on my bedroom floor, the run on sentences and comma splices. The sparkle of a lone confetti piece on University Ave seven days after New Years Eve. The tinge of sadness that lingers in the midst of even the most beautiful day, because that day will never be as it was ever again.
As I feel my belly expand, my chest grow, my baby toss & turn inside of me– I sometimes cry, my tears holding more weight than they ever have before. A kaleidoscope of emotion, carried in each drop– bliss, blessing, beauty of all that is to come. Alongside this trinity, there is some grief over the woman that I once was. I feel her most when I look at pictures of my body last year, but then I remember– there will always be pictures of me last year. I am in constant evolution, the woman I was two minutes ago is not the woman I am now. I am limitlessly experiencing all feeling and all emotion and all love and all sadness and all hurt and all joy and all new and all old all at once.
I am both the new growth of Spring, and the wilted leaf that’s held on all winter.
I don’t know what tomorrow would look like, but I’ve never known what tomorrow looked like. I’m sad my baby will never meet who I used to be, but I can’t even meet who I used to be. Every day, I approach myself as I am. And so will she.
She will feel the softness of dirt and rubble of pebbles underneath her feet. She will point at the bird in the park, with a fierce curiosity that will follow her through life. She will discover which sounds carry joy and which bring her to sleep. She will learn how to turn her coos into words. She will express herself through dance, yells, tears, love, and silence. She will see, experience, the palette of her world expanding as each day passes. She will find that she has the strength to get up, every time she falls. She will wonder who I was before I had her, and I will wonder who I could ever be without her by my side.
TIFFANY MARTÍNEZ 