Mehameha

What if you have believed

the same lie your whole life?

Not because it was true,

but because it arrived before

you knew how to question it. 

Perhaps someone placed it inside you 

when you were still learning

the names of things—

love, 

leaving,

silence—

and you mistook their absence

for a definition of yourself.

Years passed. 

You built a home around the lie. 

Give it a chair at your table.

Asked its permission before loving. 

Consulted it before dreaming. 

And every time someone walked away, 

it whispered:

See?

Mehameha.

Alone beneath a sky

too wide to answer.

Alone beside an ocean

that carried every voice away

before you could ask it to remain. 

You thought the water understood

because it, too, was always leaving.

But perhaps the shore never begged it to stay

because the shore already knew: 

departure is not always abandonment,

distance is not the end of love,

and emptiness is not proof

that nothing belongs there.

Tonight the sand

holds the warmth of a sun

no longer visible. 

The ocean touches your feet

and withdraws.

Touches

and withdraws.

And suddenly you understand

how something can leave

without rejecting you.

How something can be absent

and still return. 

How you can be alone

without being unloved. 

The lie begins to loosen. 

Not all at once. 

Only one grain at a time, 

carried out by the water

that once seemed to confirm it. 

Mehameha. 

You say the word again. 

But now it does not mean

what it meant before.

Now it is the sacred silence

between who you were told you were

and who you are beginning

to remember. 

The ocean comes back.

And this time,

you do not ask it to take away

your loneliness. 

You ask it to take away

the lie. 

— Malwina Buldys

The Oldest Home

There was a morning 

when I stood barefoot in the garden 

long after the jasmine had finished blooming. 

The air still carried its memory. 

A hibiscus unfolded. 

slowly, 

without asking whether yesterday

had been difficult.

The lemon tree held another small green fruit,

the birds continued their impossible conversations,

and somewhere beneath the soil 

roots kept doing 

what roots have always done –

finding water

in places no one could see. 

For years

I believed I was the one

carrying this body

As if my will 

were the stronger force. 

As if every mountain climbed,

every country crossed

every dream survived,

had happened because I kept moving forward. 

Only now

do I understand. 

It was never me

carrying this body. 

It was my body

carrying me. 

Patiently. 

Through cities that never slept.

Through oceans. 

Through departures that broke my heart

and arrivals that quietly rebuilt it. 

Through nights

when grief settled into my bones

like winter rain, 

and morning

when joy returned 

without explanation. 

It remembered how to breathe

on the days I forgot. 

Its heart 

never asked whether life

was worth another beat. 

It simply chose me

again. 

And again.

When my body

surrendered itself

to a silence

deeper than sleep,

I felt something unexpected.

No fear.

Recognition. 

As though my body, 

for the first time,

asked me to stop

long enough

to notice it. 

Not for its strength.

Not for its beauty. 

But for its endless devotion. 

A steam,

I am learning,

is not the opposite of wholeness.

It is where life

stitched me

back into myself. 

The tree does not mourn

the line. 

It keeps growing.

Today

I run my fingers 

across this changing landscape

with the tenderness

I once reserved

only for wild places.

Because this,

too,

is wilderness. 

These rivers beneath my skin.

These tides of breath. 

These constellations of freckles, 

veins,

and healing. 

How extraordinary

to spend a lifetime

inside a miracle

and only now

begin to introduce myself. 

So this morning

I stood barefoot

a little longer.

The earth was warm. 

The wind moved through the leaves

without needing to be seen. 

Somewhere, 

another flower

opened.

And beneath my ribs, 

life—

ancient,

faithful,

wild—

opened too. 

— Malwina Buldys

Swallows

Green breast, yellow crest,

blue wing, black beak,

morning light, morning colors,

shimmer bright, zipline drive,

bird dives, 900 tries,

in twelve hours,

summer hours,

tendrilled sweat of days.

Jellybean orbed water drops

catch  in spider nets in gamma grass.

Independence Day observed rises as

a day like any other,

a morning burdened with dew.

A dying sun burns off.

Blind sun, with fiery fingers,

touches every blade of grass,

every antler of a cricket

whispers,  what is this?

It’s the same blue sky,

same bird flying high

whether we’re in jail  

in a house, in a school

on the ripples of a pond.

Dragonflies insist

I am no slave, there is no master

(but the ones we make of mud and disaster).

It’s Independence Day today.

Sunflower stalks  host orgies of ladybugs

who tear apart aphids

suckling at a watery leaf

that stretches out its palm to fingers of sun above

generates chlorophyll of our veins

the waterfall that runs from crown

out the very soles of feet

that crush the grass

press in the soil a mark

a sign of what was there and what will come.

Lurch the engine in reverse, give it gas,  

slide to drive, inch forward among the rippled ponds of  

circling swallows in air above.

Another hot morning.

They’ve been diving for hours.  

They will dive for hours.

We drive for an hour.

We snatch a strong second,  

centuried moments of watching.

Swallows encircle

each neighborhood soul.

This is no Independence Day, like any other.

We’ve found our masters:

elliptic miracle of swallows

a staggered stupor of a sun

the fainted grasses that lay drying

in bitter heat that grows.  

—Emily Romano

One song

in a multitude of dialects

the register that elephants grumble

the chirps and squeals, the slide of otters 

Not just the song in human hearts

but one uncurling in the heart of ferns

pulsing in the swirl of bees, the sway of nests

whisper-lacing in the white fry of roots 

root clasping root in dark soil crumble

fungus linking soft root hair melody

Above, stars sing, swinging in their patterns

below, molecules cluster and part

and in between, our voices rise

Sand hisses down the slope of dunes

Mice warble in the walls, calling to their partners

Whales pulse their symphonies across the sea

A chimpanzee cradles her child and pants a breath

A human mother cradles hers—la la la lala laha she sings

—Sarah Webb

Where do I take refuge

I take refuge in a God I have no name, no image for

Just a felt sense

As deep within me as deep can get

This refuge on good or hard days

Can feel

Like a breeze trailing

Soft tendrils on my bare skin

Can feel

Like the shift shaping clouds

Following no rules, none

Just pure spontaneity

Feels like awareness

Of how my pain and the world's pain

Sits like a tonnage of weight

On my heart

Cracking it open

To reveal the compassion, tenderness, and wounding

Feels like moments

as they unfold, oh so slowly or scamper by

Refuge in momentary awareness of presence

Refuge in smiles on faces

Voices in connections

That evaporates momentarily

The weight on my heart

Refuge in the day to day tasks

Both mundane and stimulating

Refuge in seeing my broken places

And putting out the welcome mat

Refuge in the hour glass of my life emptying

And knowing that I don't know

Where I will take off when it's done emptying

Yet it will be well, all Well

—Jean Lopez

On Navigation

We move forward

because that’s the only way 

the treadmill runs

the river flows

the sand falls.

We’re all driving west

into the sunset

but do not despair

for the Earth is round

and if you go far enough one way

you come back again

probably not exactly where you started

because of planetary curvature

but there are enough new beginnings 

hatching in even the oldest of souls.

The Big Bang wasn’t one and done

it set off a seemingly infinite

number of small bangs

clanging around in molecules,

and every mathematician 

worth her chalk

knows permutations always have

an exclamation point.

A guru said:

Everything is emptiness

and yet there is still display.

That is how we are—

our core is the hum

of primordial nothingness

and yet

there is so much light

so much sound

so much light.

-Kai Cooley

What I Know About Waiting

Do not mistake stillness for ending.

Seeds spend whole seasons

hidden beneath the earth.

The tide retreats

without explaining itself.

The moon disappears

without asking permission.

Not every unanswered question

is a closed door.

Not every pause

is a loss.

Still—

there are mornings

when the silence feels heavier

than certainty.

Mornings when the map ends

and nothing arrives to replace it.

When the body asks for rest,

is it wisdom?

Or fear?

When the future remains hidden,

is it protecting something,

or withholding it?

Some journeys move

in visible miles.

Others move

in roots.

But how do you recognize growth

when nothing appears to change?

How long do you trust

what is happening beneath the surface?

And what, exactly,

are you waiting for?

And if the door remains closed,

for a month,

a year,

longer—

what part of you

continues planting seeds

anyway?

—Malwina Buldys

A Few Rules, More or Less

when wet, get dry

when cold, get warm

when tired, rest

when the wind blows, bend

when hyper, calm down

when happy, be happy

when sad, be sad

when loving, just love

when hating, see above

when being, just be

always, just be

—Paul Causey

Love is Deathless

I think the trees are exchanging information again.

Not through roots 

but through hesitation.

Every branch holding still

a fraction too long

before surrendering to wind.

This morning the world appeared slightly misaligned:

steam rising sideways from my tea,

a gull circling the parking garage

like it had forgotten the existence of oceans,

my own reflection arriving late

in the dark glass of a storefront.

Maybe love survives this way.

Not dramatically.

Not as monument.

But as a repetition so precise

the universe keeps mistaking it

for one of its physical laws.

The moon pulls water.

Heat bends metal.

Somewhere inside the chest,

something continues

despite every ending placed before it.

Even after the hand releases the hand.

Like the way birds continue singing

during the five seconds after thunder,

as if they hear a door reopening

the rest of us mistake for noise.

Even now,

the flowers on my balcony

close themselves carefully at dusk,

as though darkness

were only another form of listening.

—Malwina Buldys

North of I

Three eagle feathers

crossed oceans before they reached my hands.

One large

two smaller beside it,

like a constellation still remembering

the shape of its own becoming.

Found in Alaska,

carried first toward Hawai‘i,

toward volcanic earth and salt air,

toward the island that once taught me

how to walk barefoot into uncertainty

without losing myself.

But that year

my body became another geography.

Another climate to survive.

And so the feathers waited for me

between worlds—

crossing the Pacific,

crossing absence,

crossing the long interior distance

between who I had been

and who I was becoming.

From Hawai‘i to New York City

they traveled sealed in darkness,

yet arrived carrying sky.

North of I—

there is a place where direction

stops being a map

and becomes listening.

Where the medicine wheel turns inward.

Where east and west dissolve

inside the chambers of the heart.

Where the gravitational hymn

that holds the earth beside the sun

is the same unseen force

that breathes us through grief,

through waiting,

through return.

I think of the eagle

riding invisible currents

it does not question.

I think of how light

sometimes survives by hiding itself

inside the dark.

And I wonder

if these feathers were never meant

to symbolize flight at all,

but trust.

Three quiet witnesses

laid across my palms

one for the body,

one for the spirit,

one for the part of me

still learning

how to navigate

without leaving itself behind.

North of I

there is no arrival.

Only the great inward turning

the moment the soul remembers

it has always been held

by the same forces

that spin galaxies,

lift wings,

and keep even the broken-hearted

in perfect orbit.

—Malwina Buldys

Photo by Emily Romano

Ivory folds of youth

speckle and yellow and bow.

One more drop to earth.

.

.

.

Back again next spring.

—Emily Romano 

Avowals

I thought that if I ran fast enough

at dusk, barefoot

I could escape this plane of existence.

Sometimes consciousness

is a sand burr in your flip-flop,

a bee in your bonnet.

I wanted to meet smart people

who spoke as cleverly as books.

I fell in love with different

versions of myself

teased out by different folks.

I wanted to try out every story

for a minute.

Sometimes a moccasin mile is too far,

let alone a whole incarnated life.

I loved like someone with their hair on fire

behind soundproof glass.

I loved outside the lines

in the coloring book:

in all directions

with too much pressure.

Some days I taste sadness

in a little well

below my collarbone

where I keep my rejection slips

and broken promises,

my dashed hopes

and lost darlings,

but the taste doesn’t make it

to my tongue, my lips.

Laughter burbles up first,

all the quiet miracles to be grateful for.

Why, just yesterday, hundreds of bugs

were crawling over my windows

you can’t imagine the horror,

but I swept them up 

with a song in my heart

because the sun was shining.

It all ends the same

and I’ve been told that’s ok

at the deepest level

from a high enough vantage point.

No half-empty glass

no half-full glass

no glass

only water’s reflection

in the dark that is light.

—Kai Cooley

“Sometimes, the sky drops down to say hello”

photos by Emily Romano