Day 3 of #the100dayproject

Rose City

All those years of awe for the city, my city.

Walking down the park blocks,

I watched protesters setting camp in the grass

under the cedars heavy with rain.

Occupy Wallstreet in the Pacific Northwest.

I would take the tram into the Pearl to find

abandoned warehouses turned into shoppes

and five-star bars and restaurants.

The bookstore on Burnside 

still rough on the outside, but inside

color and gloss to appeal to Raleigh Hill clientele.

I was a college girl who stopped at the smoke shop 

and leafed through the lit mags smelling of tobacco. 

I could never afford to buy any of them.

Now that I’m back, the store smells more like e-cigarettes 

than cigars, its windows broken by the riots,

boarded up by rain-soaked plywood.

I used to think anything was possible.

I used to find inspiration in the rain 

and in the graffiti on the brick buildings.

But now I realize ‘possible’ is anywhere I am; possible is in me.

When I left those years ago, I found what I was capable of.

I found myself to worship, day after day I built myself from the ground up. 

Nothing in life is easy, but when I visit an old place 

I look back at who I was and who I am,

and I’ve found that I’m always the sum of both parts.

Day 17: NaPoWriMo - Adventures at Dammasch

This is for my mother who has stories of her life growing up in foster care in Oregon and about her mother who loved her, even if the system wouldn't let her.

Adventures at Dammasch*

She’ll tell you stories about piglets,

rubber boots, rotten eggs

cracked

over the head, and deep purple bruises.

She’ll tell you about a girl who had

dreams,

who pitched soft ball with arms made of steel,

wilder than the Oregon frontier in the

rain shadow.

She’ll tell you stories about hunger,

eating mayo warm from the

cupboard,

stories of a girl who died by darkness

in the valley of the snow

melt river;

a girl whose mama was strapped with leather

over breasts, arms, legs and

forehead;

convulsed in a stigmata of electrodes;

smothered by people in

white.

She didn’t fly over the cuckoo’s nest;

she lit up like foxfire in the rain, in the

dark.

*Dammasch State Hospital in Willsonville, Oregon was a mental health hospital founded in 1961 and closed in 1995.