Category: Music

Lessons 

Published on by Tosha Michelle30 Comments

In honor of suck up to your love day which happens tomorrow, I give you a list. You’d rather have jewlery? Same!

Things I’ve Learned From Relationships

1. Always be yourself if you can’t be who you are with your partner, what’s the point? If you feel you have to be something you’re not to gain your significant other’s affection then this is a huge red flag

For me that means being my awkward, weird and random self.

2. You deserve to be appreciated and treated well. Never be anyone’s afterthought, second choice, or stand in. You are amazing and should be treated as such

Seriously, do not put up with neglect. Ani’t nobody got time for that.

3. Love isn’t like the movies, at least after the endrpohins wear off. Love is a choice. It’s an action. If you base your relationship on feelings, you’ll end up being disappointed or looking for the next emotional high. Feelings come and go, but real love endures and it is a conscious effort

Sometimes love is more like a day at the dentist or a walk off a cliff

4. Compromise. It’s not always about you. Consider your partner’s needs and be willing to meet them halfway.

It’s mostly about what I want though. Kidding

5. Lies and withholding information have no place in a good relationship. Honesty is fundamental along with being able to communicate in a healthy way. Your partner should be your best friend, greatest cheerleader, and your reality check

Nobody wants just a yes man in their lives unless they have egos like eggs

6. Having things in common is important and being able to blend your lives together.

Differences can be fun too.

7. Being loved and validated is everything. You need to feel like you matter and are a priority. The person you’re with should make you feel secure and cherished everyday

Everyday.. even on Super Bowl Sunday.

8. Sometimes, love hurts There will always be disappointments that crop up and growing pains as you and your partner go through your life together. This pain can serve to teach you how to love your partner better

Or how to love someone else better the next time

9. Love goes much deeper than sexual gratification. Sex can be a wonderful way to express love, but shouldn’t be the only way, or the lychpin that holds the relationship together. If you build your partnership on the physical alone, it will crumble. The superficial will never last Take time to connect on a deeper level, one that is emotional and spiritual.

Sex is natural. Sex is cool, but you can find it anywhere. 

10. Sometimes relationships end no matter how much love and work you put into them. People change. Circumstances shift and hearts grow cold. It’s a sad, but the most important lesson I’ve learned is never give up, never stop trying. Love will come again.

In the meantime, there’s always books, chocolate, BOB and lists!

Ode to Grass Stains and Wildberries

Published on by Tosha Michelle131 Comments

unnamed (8)

We create our own joy.
Come roll around with me
in the grass til our
clothes are stained.
Til the clouds turn violet.

Let’s eat ice cream under
the stars and hold each other
until the restlessness dissipates.
Tonight let’s not battle the hardwood floors,
the laundry chute, or the dishes.

Let’s defy gravity, monotony,
the drudgery of life.
Throw away the map.
Let’s find another way.
Eat the wild berries.
Live on the breeze.
Amp up the brightness of
the moon.
Who cares if the universe
complains?

Let’s create a language
that fits us, in a land
of pine cones and sage.
Red dress on the ground
where desire stays.

Nouns infused with passion
tongue, earlobes, necks..
Shuttering hands, quivering bodies.
The sentences of ourselves.
Infinitives, unearthing new verbs
and their allure.

Upgrading our love
to a window seat in first
class.

Rethinking how.
Reordering now.

-Tosha Michelle

Just Go

Published on by Tosha Michelle37 Comments


Flowers of what is pollinated
by bees of what might have
been. Mundane afternoons married
to evenings of TV and ringtones
that have forgotten how to ring.
An old journal reminds her
it’s not too late
to resurrect a dream or lost
shimmer, to right her caddy-corner
heart left askew by
a lover’s hands. She grasps
for the notes under air,
leaving the past to glide
past and out the door.
She bows to the cartography of light
and presses the guidebook to
her chest. Knowing it’s time
to rise and go, to spiral out
into the unmoored and unknown.

-Tosha Michelle

This Year’s Death

Published on by Tosha Michelle30 Comments

The year’s death is approaching
and my soul is in migration.

The breath of frost lingers
longer with each passing winter.

I sit looking out at the night,
coming down like calendar
pages falling to the floor.

The moon looks like a clock.
The wind whispers “tick tock”

The ghosts of 2017 stumble around in my backyard.

Unfulfilled dreams appear like
oracles at my front door.

I measure my loses.
I count my gains.
I write my life in blue.

Praying for the luminous dawn
of fresh beginnings.

Hope diamonds the sky.
I long to dance with starlight
in a tango I’ve never danced

Hipswaying my way across
the galaxy.

Peeling off the last twelve months
like sheets.

The flakes of auld lang syne.
no longer glazing my bowl.

The skeletons of the past
under my feet.

Knowing biography is not fate.
There’s still time for revisions.

My heart quicken by the sun.
My soul renewed.

Bathe in the bright light
of a new year

-Tosha Michelle

Music For Sunday ❤️

Published on by Tosha Michelle7 Comments

“This is our life
These are our friends
This is our family that grows and bends.
This is our chance
This is our time
This is us making things to somehow leave behind
What  will we leave behind to show
That this is our life”

Here, There is Pixie Dust

Published on by Tosha Michelle108 Comments

image

Sometimes I am only interested in small things.

The chocolate bar, a hot bath.
The turned down corner of a book page, the beauty of the sky.

This is not unhappiness.
Yet, still I dress in layers
of sorrow.

I wrap a scarf around my heart like a tourniquet
to keep the darkness from bleeding out.

It’s winter inside of me,
but the frost has not yet taken over.
My soul still hints of blue birds,
jazz notes, Monet paintings.

My soul attuned to spring.
I hide it in the closet for later.

It’s always a balance regardless of the season.

There’s still daisies in need of planting, leaves in need of raking.

Tonight, restlessness breaks
like a coconut, open windowed,
near.

Where is serenity?
For weeks its been walks, poetry and Miles Davis.

I grow stranger with each passing year,
more sensitive, more aware.

I long to flame the wind
with a strike of a match
only it knows.

I long to praise the weeds, the wildflowers.
Who’s to say which is which?

I’m still seeking glitter, the pull of a sliver boned moon,
the litter of pixie dust.

Now before Neverland becomes never.
Now before life is tossed downriver,
spinning in time’s current.

My restless heart, wait to be taken away,
beyond the window, to starlight things.

To design a language I can dance to,
to find kismet in avoiding the side steps and serenity in the fall.

-Tosha Michelle