Stories and poetry from an overly-curious traveler. Stories shape the way I see the world, and I want to share my stories with you.
Hello all,
Thank you for your encouragement and support for my writing. I wrote and published a book of poetry recently.
Please check it out on Barnes and Noble or Amazon 🙂
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-house-of-empty-spaces-julie-sequoia-webb/1142852123
With gratitude,
Julie
I lost you
Before I even knew who you were
The memory is not real
But shaped by years without
The reality is a blur
Filled with doubt
The first pain I felt
The first blow I was dealt
Was grief
Disbelief
Who would you be today?
How different would my life be
If you had grown older loving me
You were my protector
My security
My father figure
You made everything better
With your presence
Sitting in your wood-paneled station wagon
I was too young to know what happened
I was left alone, without an explanation
Only an absence, an imagination
I imagined that you could see me
From somewhere out there
A child’s rationale of death, inconceivably
I imagined you knew all the bad things
Everything I had done
That you could see from the sky
Nothing now escaped your eyes
I couldn’t explain grief until I was older
Until I had words for these things
The feelings that loss brings
Grief comes at strange times
On the airplane, in checkout lines
At the DMV, when I’m empty
20 years later in therapy
It sneaks up on me
Maybe I grieve you all the time
Yet you are only a memory
A photograph I keep with me
A frog that jumps across my path
And I imagine that you see me
After all these years you laugh
Since you’re not here
I can make you anything I want
My loss grows flowers
I feel your love in the present
Everybody is watching me
Eyes in my walls
Holes poked through
An inner view
At once I realize
I’m being watched
I weigh the cost
I’m aware of the eyes
And don’t know what to do
Seeing my inside
When I’m alone
Vulnerable at home
I replay all my actions
All that has already happened
The eyes don’t go away
How long has it been this way
An intrusion of privacy
An anonymous view
A subtle crime
That will go unpunished
The discomfort is mine
And then I wake up with a start
Replaying my surveillance
In my waking state
I realize my fate
I’m being watched at any rate
Awake or asleep
Privacy is a luxury
My nightmare is that everyone can see
I’ll no longer be alone
I’m being watched through my walls
I’m being watched in my home,
I’m being watched by strangers
By my computer, my phone
I’m being watched by myself
At every moment
But who is the watcher?
Are the eyes my own?
How do you move through the world
When the world is against you
It will not admit it out loud
But will hint of injustice
In ways that you will feel
Yet will not be able to explain
It will make you question what is true
The pain will be your pain
How do you move through the world
When you are set up for failure
When you didn’t get the same
Amount of
Time
Love
Money
And you know it
Others know it too
But will not acknowledge
At least not to you
They pray for you to
Go to college
Work harder
Change
Deal with it
College doesn’t fix broken dreams
College doesn’t sew up the seams
Of unfairness, life’s cruelty
The heaviness of humanity
Resting laboriously
On certain beings
Others will not say
Not to your face
It will be talked about
You will be talked about
Not by name
Impersonally
Theoretically
Speculatively
In offices, in meetings, in expensive rooms
With catered dinners, stuffed pockets
Fancy watches, privelge
But nobody will do anything about it
Except you
It’s up to you
The makers of the problem
Will not offer a solution
But who created the problem?
How can you blame an institution?
The individual lingers
Behind corporate names
Government agendas
Money and fame
There are too many fingers
To point
Not enough to touch
To change
Help is offered
With things expected in return
Help is not free
It is not given willingly
Some people deserve things
Others only accept what help brings
Who decides who gets help
Help is a transaction
Not a gaurentee
Success is not equally distributed
Help is not equally distributed
Despite the need
The desperate plea
Acceptance
Prayer
Pity
It’s life, it’s just hard
You’ll survive
These words run marathons
Around dispair
By people trying to care
These words are easy to say
Smooth utterances of the fortunate
The card dealing
The ones in control
The lucky ones
Things are going thier way
How do you move through the world
When you don’t have a voice
When you can’t speak
When you don’t know what to say
To get what you want
And even if you said it
Wrote it all down
It would be in the wrong language
In the wrong font
Nobody will tell you the rules
You fumble around in the dark
Looking for tools
Finding only a spark
It’s not enough
How do you move through the world
When you’re invisible
When no one sees you
When no one cares
Eyes averted
When you are painfully aware
Of the feeling
Of it being unfair
Of the meaning
Not going anywhere
Empathy is not possible
Without knowing
A society of hostile
Feelings growing
How can you fix
What you’ve never experienced
What you don’t understand
The ones who have the power
Seem to have the better hand
And you
The one who never got to
What do you have planned?
Will you be able to demand
Something different
What is a prayer
A hopeful plea for someone to care
Something or someone
That’s bigger than everything else out there
A request for help
A feeling that we are in control
Softly pulling the invisible strings
Addressed to a God we cannot know
A mysterious force
Reliquished to the void
That manages all things
A comfort in a sea of insecurities
A negotiation for our impurities
A twisting of God’s arm
Despite the selfish nature of prayer
We mean no harm
We pray for our team to win
For something to remove our sins
For a clear day
For our sickness to go away
Prayers so deep and insignificant
Almost fully prepared to repent
A universal drawing of strings
A selected day to receive blessings
What of a prayer that helps one
And harms the rest
Some of are surely cursed
While the others are blessed
I suppose we are all just trying to do our best
Maybe I don’t know how to pray
I think I believe in something
But I don’t know what to say
To get what I want
To tip the Universe’s favor my way
I’ve tried with my eyes closed
Standing still, laying down
Walking around
Even on my knees, on the ground
If my prayers are heard
Who knows, who believes
I do know how to cry and sweat and scream
I do know how to fantasize and dream
I do know how to let go
I do know how to admit that I don’t know
Who do you pray to
Is there something special I have to do
I pray to the grass, to the sun
I scream my desires to the mountain
I forget my problems when I run
When to push myself to go far away
Just to make it through another day
When I swim in the ocean
Let the music and waves move me to fun
When I finally allow myself to play
Have you ever laid in the fresh summer grass
Let the sun beat down on your face
Beads of sweat rolling down
Knowing you will burn if you stay in that place
Not caring, letting the bugs crawl on your skin
Savoring the space, taking it in
The sweet smell of flowers, the summer season
Letting the clouds and time pass
To get up and begin again
Is that a prayer?
What do you pray for
Do you wish upon a star
Send a message to sea
To help you on your journey
You tell me to will pray for me
But I don’t want your prayers
I want kindness and empathy
Can you listen without a prayer
Listen to the Universe if you dare
Don’t offer a prayer of judgement
Don’t offer a prayer to have something to say
Your prayers won’t help me anyway
Is silence a prayer
Maybe awareness is the only thing out there
Have you ever sat for hours in meditation
So long you can feel your body, your hair
So long that your become intently aware
Of energy, of feeling, of the world that’s unfair
Have you ever run in the rain
Have you ever fully embraced your pain
Have you ever loved so deeply
That you will never be the same
Have you ever loved someone different from you
Proving our silly biases untrue
What will a prayer change?
There are billions of voices that must be heard
Hundreds of languages
In which prayers are offered
Certainly no one is favored
We are all trying to make it in this crazy world
Wether prayer is fact or fiction
Belief is the only thing that makes a difference
Claiming your space in this broad expanse
A belief that maybe you have a chance
If you believe it works then it is so
It doesn’t matter where your prayer will go
It doesn’t matter if it happens quick or slow
Keep praying so the world will know
You exist, you matter
There’s something about going deep into nature that reminds me – I can let go. I don’t have to hold on so tightly to all the things I want. I don’t have to know.
This journey is slow
I zigzag across the river, falling deeper into nature, not seeing a soul
The desolate wilderness makes me feel fear but also whole
I’m reminded that I’m so very vulnerable
I have so little control
I choose a path and try my best to follow
But it’s hard to know what to do
When the path is no longer working for you
Do I keep going and try to see it through
Or turn around and find something else to pursue
I suppose I must take my cue
From my inherent feeling
The universal dealings
That I don’t understand
I’d like to think there’s a plan
The more time I spend thinking
The less time I spend listening
I dig my head in the sand
I’m completely alone, on my path
But the butterflies dance around me
The silence settles, the leaves chime in
Allowing my awareness to expand
To be in solitude is not a punishment
But an opportunity to understand
That everything changes
Including the scape of the land
Life is a kalescope
Shaken by someone’s elses hand
The colors and patterns may not suit me
But they will reform
Changing patterns is the norm
I struggle uphill
Yet the struggle is inside still
I trudge up a mountain and wonder how
I’ll get through what I’m going through now
Despite the sweat, confusion, and tears
This journey could take years
I choose to be happy now
Despite my insistent fears
Knowing it will all workout somehow
I stop and take in the sounds of nature
The wind, birds, running water
And keep trudging, just a little softer
I climb, higher and higher
My outlook becomes a little brighter
Your mind is a traitor that has betrayed you
It has left behind a body
But stolen your personality
Your ability to have a conversation
Your presence is here
Although not really
We all pretend like you are the same
What you have created still stands
Surrounded by your family
Reminiscing about who you used to be
Your wisdom and generosity
I found you a different person
Robbed of your energy
Greif with a side of dementia
To remember again
To be reminded again
Just to go back into that far away world
The fuzzy place of your childhood
A false memory that does no good
You look at me with blank eyes
Not seeing me
And ask where your soul is
Where he is
What can I say
Nothing I say can make it better
I don’t want to remind you
You know he is not here
Your heart breaks over and over
Every time you ask
There are no words for this
I’ll hold your hand through the fear
I’ll stay by your side during the loss
There’s an empty chair
And empty bed
Empty after sixty nine years
A house full, but empty at the same time
A table with the centerpiece missing
A room devoid of pictures and light
You can feel that something is different
But can’t place it, can’t explain it
There’s a void next to you every night
The walls have shifted
A desolate wilderness is left behind
You are alone in the desert
An arid land with no reprieve
Trying to find him
You are looking for water
He was your oasis
And has dried up, disappeared
The world has turned upside down
You don’t know where your place is
Your spirit left with him
Your love of so long
I can see it in your eyes
You have already gone
I imagine the lives
Of those who have past
I walk amongst what is left behind
Spirituality and brutality exist
Side by side
Self preservation
Is in our nature
We have evolved so much
And shy away from war
Yet we have the same primal instincts
As those who came before
We need to conquer, explore, and claim
Make love, reproduce
And create Gods to explain
All that we can’t
Has our technology made us better
Or connected us less
From our bodies and nature
From those who knew best
Their computer was the sky
It’s memory the Earth
The sun the central force
The moon controlled the cycles
Of death and birth
We now take a selfie
Try to look our best
We’ve abandoned our compass
The sun and the stars
We use our computers to think less
Our bodies are now processed
A donut filled with jelly
Our minds unhealthy
A medicated mess
We are so out of sync
But we think we know
We own the land, the sky, the waters
And destroy it slow
Yet history teaches us
That all humans come and go
Despite our power and ego
The Earth was here before we came
We destroy and reinvent ourselves
But we all have life just the same
The larger force has not changed
Perhaps it’s in our nature to want more
Is this what humans are meant for?
Have all of us wondered
About the lives of those
Who came before
Yet we’ve put history aside
How often we use our phones
Instead of feeling what’s inside
It seems we have lost our guide
Our intuition
Let the past teach us a lesson
To appreciate human connection
And be present
For what we will become
Let us remember where we came from
Mexico City sprawls
Rises up
The city stretches out it’s busy arms
Between the mountains
A bustling valley
Purple flowers bloom
Uneven sidewalks greet me
Closed baskets
Street markets
Ask you to look inside
The entire city sinks
Leans
Mexico City
A city of dreams
Flowers and trees
Tortillas and towers
Pollution permeates
Fragrant gas, food, flowers
Aren’t we all leaning slightly
You might not notice at first
The flaws peek through the character
The curves lead us astray
But in them we play
We are all sinking
Deeper into life
Finding our way
The buildings bend ever so slightly
Smiling upon Mexico City
Showing their history
Cracks are markers of age
Vibrant life
The city plays music
Dances and sways
There are no straight lines
We are all warped
Defined
By our leaning
Ever so slight
Embracing our flawed beauty
Uniqueness
Mexico City invites us in
And teaches us
That we are all built on top of something
What happened before shapes us
And pushes us
To be something more
Isn’t that what cities are for?
I am full of holes
A human sieve
Emotions pour through me
But they don’t stay
I am putty
I allow people to play
Mold my identity
Sometimes irresponsibly
There are holes in my soul
My experiences are vague
I can’t make sense of
Any feeling, any day
Nothing sticks
Everything flows through me
While time passes away
My mind is full of holes
Things that happened long ago
Morphed into memories
Blank spots
Illusions and stories
That I can’t show
Shape-shift and sway
In my conscious
They are close
But happening so far away
My body is full of holes
Incomplete
Fragments of humanity
People I meet
Everyone sees me
And experiences me differently
I must be careful
Not to fall in my holes
They like to hide
I don’t know their exact location
It’s hard to see when I’m inside
Their depth is immeasurable
Their deception penetrable
Old holes and new holes
Needing repair
How can I heal myself
When there are holes everywhere?
Julie Sequoia Webb 