She/Her/They/Them/It She is the woman lost in the fog whose face becomes indistinguishable from the wind Her eyes, deep and dark, give you a place to rest A place to remember what you left behind All of it, scattered in the stars They/them all lost, all found It is okay POC and a 61 year old woman Distinguished by the colors of the earth that are her skin Once her hair was the color of the sky at midnight She wrote poems and forgave your trespasses Spit out her rages, cut and burned to see you Today she is a person whose hair grows white and gray Makes her invisible, so she can cast her spells And utter the poems the stars bequeath to her LGBTQIA+ She loves the lines on your face that create your smile You, the woman to her woman, the woman to her many The girls you were both imagining love indistinguishable from life Oh the glory between your lips, your fingers, your thighs The most exquisite joy as your bodies rode the starlight To the edge of a spiral galaxy and leapt, oh, the ferocity! No scars, just eyes burning in the night Major Depression with Psychotic Features, PTSD Her joy grows from impossible places as she pulls herself up From quicksand, love like a vengeance sears her heart She breathes out fire and flowers as she lives/loves her life The voices in her head reverberate in her veins distinguished by there erudite calls for her nothingness Death her final temptation, as she is afflicted by nightmares Or relives the past with merciless clarity The only real thing what the stars assure her of, is your love
Author
Mia Ruiz
Mia Ruiz
Mia Ruiz is a first generation, Peruvian-American poet who worked in the Bay Area for 25 years as a psychiatric social worker during the wax and wane of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She currently lives in the beautifully biodiverse, geographically chaotic, complicated county of Lake, CA. She lives with her beloved in front of Clear Lake (one of the oldest freshwater lakes in California (whose basin has been inhabited by the diverse Pomo people for at least 11,000 years) and the ‘dormant’volcano, Mt. Konocti (whose threat of eruption was elevated to “high” risk in 2018). Some of her poems were published in the two anthologies titled Resilience and Restore compiled through Middletown Art Center after the recent firestorms.
NCO/EPIC POETRY CONTEST WEEK 3 $100 WINNING POEM – BUG OUT BY MIA RUIZ
by Mia Ruiz
written by Mia Ruiz
6 years of firestorms each felt still
in the lung of memory
such precise fears, anxieties, losses
even as spring eases into our minds in tender sun green leaves
on the oaks
and myriad wild flowers in bud through verdant grasses
on the window screen a few Mayflies live out
their one, amazing day of life perhaps admiring the view of the lake from which
they just emerged
give our lives perspective
One evacuation under our belt Room in our car for only 3 kitties Some clothes, important
documents We drove to family in Humboldt
8 hours, of letting go and letting go Silence, breath, introspective
We thought about leaving these summers and autumns of smokey air
and apocalyptic sunsets, but instead we buy a backpack, our 'bug out’ bag our new
lexicon, and laugh
our evacuation plan written finally, on a crisp spring day in order of importance
safety before danger, life before death the cry of the osprey half
An hour before first light Catch and medicate the kitties Into the carrier, into the car
Our‘bug out’ bag
Call to a friend
Who will start our phone tree Our game of tag
The car always full of gas We live deeply each moment
Ready to ‘bug out’
With no regret, no lament
