October Reflections

Published on by Tosha Michelle


I’ve spent hours walking through the woods between bough and bramble..I feed on oaks in the netted forest. The sun hushed sky lighting my way. I make up rhymes straight from my chaotic head. Finding reflections in nature’s movement on a gentle October day. 

I ghost dance with a song of myself. Bridging the unbridgeable.  My body haunted by the hum of yesteryears and
things left undone. Wishing I got over things as easy as some. Yet,  I’m obligated to feel every missteps and my wrong opinions of my battered soul. Always the first to stick myself with pins,
even though I’ve been blessed with unconditional love and acceptance. I’m still afraid of never being enough, of feeling
alone, of being forgotten. Scared of not being able to discern
genuine affection from inauthentic affected entanglement.  Why am I still so naïve?  Why do I trust too much? 

As I walk back toward home. I remember
that my foundation is strong. That each
path I’ve traversed has led me where I’m
suppose to be. Somehow fuller from grief
and faults start. The frame of myself feeling each chilly breeze, each twig broken. Never quite able to lay down the
dregs of my soul. There are so many ways to go wrong. I refuse to count them
anymore. I’m tired of being anxious on my behalf. I will always have a melancholy heart, but my spirit is formidable. 

Home now with a cup of hot chocolate and the warmth of kindreds, I offer up a toast to sorrows felt, those I’ve lost who have long moved on, and to the realities of self. Here’s to the story of stories left to be told, to long walks and ink saturated nights. Lines that shutter and get redefine, do overs, and the allure of fresh pine. Cheers to a woman child with a pocket full of thorns, and shooting stars in her eyes, a life of contusions, and cherry picked pages, the girl who lives for the scent of honeysuckles and always finds the will to go on.

-Tosha Michelle

This song is so beautiful. My heart!

24 thoughts on “October Reflections”

  4. In June I think/used to call on a childhood friend/his house overlooked a river/the stairway porch was wrapped in honeysuckles/some adult showed me once/you could sip a private drop of nectar/take off a single flower/pinch the the green bulb at the base/and slide the stamen (pistils?) down by pulling/squeezing out a single transparent drop/boy was that delicious/I used to imagine the yellowish ones/superior to the white in taste/but likely my imagination/so I feel a solid solidarity/with anybody who likes anything/to do with honeysuckle flowers 🙂

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