Category: Photography

There’s no hiding place left
for my soul.
The dark spaces have all been
lit, filled with a warm glow.
My flesh radiates heat, my skin
alive. My eyes giving me away.

Should I run? Try and find a dark alley
somewhere? The street lights shaped
like hearts seem to say “be still”.
But I’m afraid. I want to close my eyes.
But I know I’ll just end up peeping.
Finally believing in the voice I hear counting.
Knowing I don’t want to be invisible anymore.
I’m ready to be found.

-Tosha Michelle

Sometimes when the world and people become too much to take
I develop winter brain: a sort of icy mindfulness
where I embrace the chill and long to hibernate
with the bears, while the snowbird helicopters
over the frozen lake harassing the air and
frost bite lingers on my soul.
My heart a solid ice sheet hasn’t a care.
I inhale the silence while the palest of
green fights to break through.
For a moment at least, I remain
as cold and calm as the
white of the snow overspread
on the ground.

-Tosha Michelle

She carried his image like a cherish photograph- a handsome man dressed in a soft, faded sweater, blue jeans, and loafers, standing on the beach in a seaside town on the last day of November. The sky hinting at something brighter. There was hope but no chance. The sun mournfully hid behind the clouds. The seductive and perilous waves tried to shake the image.

The image would not fade. It was the eve of the other life she would never live. In the years to follow, she would return, her heart trying to translate what was never meant to be. Her singular salvation of faded dreams and a man she loved well once, lost to the seasonal tides of life and the fatal missteps of fate out of time.

-Tosha Michelle

The self always strikes
dissonant chords,
the world of her mind
never quite at peace.
More often, the self walks
along imagination’s street.
Here she is free from
monotony and fear.

The self wants? What?
A freezing shot of clarity?
The pulse and throb
of a sexy life?
The bruised scent of strawberries?
Piano keys and satin sheets,
a world free from hate?
The sweet salt of a lover’s skin?

The self never can seem
to get it right.
She offers herself to pen and paper.
Writing her rebellious truths.
She travels along on words
in moonlight visions,
casting a poetic sheen.
Plunging toward that place
you aren’t allowed to dive,
but the self does anyway.
Here she comes alive.
Here there’s no bottom.
No end. Here the self can
tell you anything.
Watch the self
spilt herself open.
times three.

-Tosha Michelle

“Everything that drowns me, makes me wanna fly”