Moss and Mushrooms

Small laps around the sun

A chapter about little things that feel profoundly beautiful.
No TWs.

The colors of spring and winter 
My screen glowed in the darkness of my mothers old house. I wrote late on December 21st 2020.
I'm trying something new today. I'm trying something new every day.
I wrote short poems, I used simple wording and little to no punctuation.
I wrote about words I had read in the dictionary during an exam of sorts.
I titled each chapter the date, I used silly descriptions, I wrote a poem about how I finally learned what a comma was, I hadn't.
What am I? What am I to be? What is god? Where does God live?
I wrote about finding authenticity and identity. I wrote letters to god, a god I sometimes believed and often did not. I wrote about overcoming the bad times when the bad times had not yet arrived. I endlessly digested the experience of sharing the story for the first time.
I would understand the lessons before I would unlearn them. I would know what I am but soon the poems would show that I had forgotten.
At that age I felt I did not complete anything, forever a work in progress milling over another unfinished project, and while my voice did shake I told my story.
Reading it over again was like walking into my childhood home, seeing the paintings of mushrooms and exactly where the metaphors came from. I relived the sense of naive happiness and hope.

5:50 PM
There are one hundred moments that feel profound, miniscule moments that resonate like a lap around the sun.
I think of the child I made paper chain snakes with today, the moments of laughter I had at his home, a child with beautiful and untamed excitement, I have always been the one growing up, I now watch his name become clearer when he writes it.
I think of the rooms I needed to be in, the places that had what I was looking for, the places I berated and avoided, and the excitement that ran through the house when the third person I asked could give me a ride there.
I think of depositing my checks and hear someone call me by my legal name, it felt so unfamiliar, I've been Elliot for so long.
I think about the moment I realized I feel excitement every day, excitement that can't sit still, excitement over little things, excitement that is unashamed.
I think of how I started to love being at my mothers house, with the endless noise, sharing a room with my sister and talking with her late at night.
I think of feeling like maybe the bits and pieces aren't such a bad thing, that I can define myself in a way that does not feel binding, in a way that does not feel like I am a glass bowl that has been thrown at the ground.
I think of when I noticed these things in myself, these things have always been there, things that felt too ugly to exist with, I did feel unlovable but I don't anymore.
I think about my boyfriend, the silly texts I send him, the nights and mornings in which I wonder what it will be like to wake up next to him.
I think of squeezing someone when I hug them, of every time I realize a little more that I was never alone, of all the moments in which I live in something that I deemed unacceptable but never was.
I think of wearing a heart shaped silver locket, the months of February and October written on one side, Moss and Mushrooms written on the other.

Write about things that make you feel free
Realizing the ugly thing I felt defined who I was, the thing that made me everyone I didn't want to be, the thing I believed would lead my to my last night after years of suffocating summers is no longer the overarching and consuming thing it once was, that theses stories will one day stop using the same words.
Knowing that I was never unlovable, even when I told myself I was, understanding that the people who love me love me for what I am, not what I failed to mold myself to be. Holding someone tighter than I need to when I hug them. The unearthing secret was just another line of the story. The secrets never kept and never asked for.
Excitement too big to exist in a still body, excitement like finding a four leaf clover every morning.
The peace that settles into my bones after I pray about it, realizing I forgot it was weighing on my shoulders. Having this sense that I am going to feel yellow throughout most of it.

Lovebug
I think I've been looking for it without ever saying it out loud, each thought a request but never said as a prayer, things never spoken but said endlessly.
I finished the to-do list. The lights have not been on for hours. The music has stopped playing. I wrote in the glowing screen all I felt I needed to.
I see myself with him, I see myself talking about what we will do tomorrow, tomorrow is always Sunday, it seems I find myself asleep before I am able to finish the daydream.