“Where in this life can I sink into the / melting of my hips?”

“If I close my eyes, I see my body, painted in blue luminescence, pulsing excitedly with light and ready to radiate the everythingness of this life, of this love, onto a page. The page will always listen. But let me tell you, dear reader, the page listens when I honor the story. When you honor the story.”

What do you think it would feel like to meet yourself — but a self that is not exactly yourself? Meet Rosa and Lupe, parallel selves who exchange a weird but intimate encounter one Friday evening.

“There, too, my anxiety felt at home. My fast-moving legs through Grand Bazaar, overstimulated by sounds and senses and smells on my way to sip the black tea that would be absorbed by the creamy crunch of Künefe between my four front teeth.”

“We hug hard and I feel I'm where I'm supposed to be”

“Because I may never feel quite perfect, but may always hold the desire to achieve perfection deeply within me, the process of intentionally living in grace is upheld as a tenet of the Self I am becoming through this process of shedding — of transformation.”

“There's something slippery about my sexy. / Something soft about my strength.”

“Writing is another sense altogether.”

“The inner world was calling for my softness — my surrender. My old methods of constant pushing and doing were no longer effective. My process and practice of expression had shifted.”

“Speak to me again / in the way / that melts my vertebrae.”

“And so as I reflect on the journal entry that prompted this cognition — and metacognition — I think of love as a kind of knowledge.”

“She lost recollection of where she was, what had happened throughout the day, her plan for the rest of the trip, and submitted the whirlwind and whimsy of this kiss.”

“Our friend, the moon / Dances with us / Challenging the dense viscosity of our spirits / To loosen, lengthen, flow / Flow is life.”

“Guilt is such a burden. It eats me up inside and spits me back out, slyly grinning like it's got a hold of me.”

“Oh sweet surrender… / Drops of your love stain / my lips like raspberry sorbet.”

A journey through the astral realm…

“What a pleasure to transcend the ego, even if only for a bit. / To revel in the pure consciousness of my being; / to explore life in this body / to explore what it means to love in this body…”