For The Next Time You Talk About Food Stamps

Next time you think about a food stamp recipient, think of me.

The next time that you complain about all these lazy people on welfare, checking out with their SNAP card that your taxes pay for while they're on their iPhone and wearing their nice jeans, think of me and my beautiful daughter. No one from the outside would know our struggle. No one can see just by looking at me that I am a single mom that was just laid off, who has known better days financially. I'm texting on a hand-me-down iPhone that was a gift from my dad. Neither my daughter or myself look or smell like we're living below the poverty line, but we are. Everything we're wearing or holding was a gift from a birthday or Christmas, or a hand-me-down from a generous family. We both smile and laugh, neither of us looking dejected or homeless. But I'm paying for the cart of groceries that will feed us for the next week with government aid. Am I abusing the system? It doesn't feel like it to me.

How would I feed Paige if I didn't have food stamps? Her formula is expensive and I was unable to breast feed because of a medical condition. She needs fruits and vegetables and bread and meat to grow, and I need all of those things to have the energy to be a good mother to her. The charity of family and friends is wonderful and clearly comes from Holy Providence, but I still don't know anyone personally who is in the position to foot my monthly grocery bill or my rent. I was laid off the week before Christmas. I am the only income for my household and it's my job to do everything in my power to provide for my daughter. What would you do in my situation? Applying for food stamps definitely does a number on a person's pride - there's no need to perpetuate the stigma by publicly complaining about your tax dollars going to lazy welfare recipients who should just get a job.

I have applied for twenty plus jobs since the day I found out the hospital was shutting down. I have sold too-small baby clothes and other things that we didn't really need in order to have a little money to buy presents for Paige. Could I sell my slightly-broken iPhone and all the cute clothes I have before relying on government programs? Sure! But I'm sure I would get less than enough to buy a week's worth of groceries for all of it, and then I'd be stuck without a phone for potential employers to call me on, or clothes to wear to my interviews, or my sense of self-worth and pride in the way my daughter and I present ourselves to the world. 

When I walked into the Jefferson County office to apply for more benefits than I was already receiving, I noticed that very few people in the room with me looked "poor." Many of them were wearing clothes that looked nice, had a smart phone, had kids next to them who were playing with fun, bright plastic toys that had seen very little wear. Would you judge everyone in that room? How do you know their story? Is there abuse in the system? Sure. Of course. Any system, no matter what it is or who is running it, even a church, will have a few people who want to take advantage of its generosity. But I am not one of those people. I am doing everything in my power to provide for Paige and I in this scary time of unemployment. And I'm sure everyone in that room had a story not too different from mine.

So next time you think of a food stamp recipient, think of me. Think of the judgements you may be passing on someone whose story you know nothing about. And remember that things are almost never what they seem. "Below the poverty line" may not look like the rambling homeless guy with no teeth. It may look like a nice girl with a beautiful daughter, lost in a world that dealt her a bad hand this time, doing everything she can to make her life better. "Below the poverty line" may look just like me. 

He's An Old Friend

Worry comes to me in the night time, to talk and to speak and to explain the difference betwen the two. He pours himself a water from the sink and watches me closely. He can be as large as the sky and as small as the dirt on the kitchen floor. My mouth opens but words don't come out; Worry makes its way in and nestles, couch surfing in the sanctuary of my innards, making his sorry self at home, leaving signs of lifelessness everywhere. I pick up after him, caps from beer bottles and relics of the past, ticket stubs from places he went without me. How does Worry travel so far and still manage to come home? He leaves the bed cold and my fridge empty, my stomach full but my appetite dissatisfied. He makes me meals that I never taste and leaves his stench in dirty laundry all over my frontal lobe. We have breakthroughs together over wine in dirty glasses, but he points out the mess and we start all over again. You can medicate anxiety but you can't erase the patterns that have followed you for a decade; there is no such eraser. Goo-Be-Gone doesn't hold a candle to this melted wax all over the carpet. I can't eradicate the scent of Worry from this place. He is everywhere and in everything, invading me with impregnated thoughts of weight loss and hair color, appearances and motherhood, responsibility and joy, tipping scales with sugar and yeast, fermenting the age-old voices into whiskey that goes down like nail polish remover. I would stop inviting him over, but he's an old friend. He fills me up and keeps me company, even if it's the miserable kind, and Lord knows I spend more time with him than I do with my own self, but I lost my own self in the dishwasher and the dryer, and she won't come out unless I put these fingers to the typewriter, and even then only in trickles. Worry bleeds on the paper and we start all over. I bandage his hands and we start all over. I kiss his wounds and we start all over. He says he'll never leave me, but it's all I can do to keep myself from drinking him down deep and then out the door for good. 

You and Me Under the Sky

I lifted up my soul to the sky and realized the connection between. We are all atoms, together in one body. The darkness and the light, negative and positive charges, flying around like magnets, centered by proton-peace. A rainbow of reality just beneath the heavy grey veil. I can see glimpses of it but never the whole. Only through your lungs have I breathed the truth in oxygen. You've experienced the clouds, the heaven above and the hell below, relaying the sights to me through backwards binoculars. I cannot see as you have seen, but I love the way you talk about the view. Your lips drip symphonies, the notes like inner tubes to float on the river. Downstream there is no judgement. Jealous of your understanding, I hide in my warm bed of ignorance and let this anger wash me to sleep. Why can't I escape from this? Trapped in the Matrix of past and future, I long to be in the present with you, only with you, and what we have. My soul already married yours. Why does anything else matter? Tied to you with cords too strong to break, too soft to hurt, I know I'm never leaving, and you're never leaving. And fuck everyone else's opinions, fuck the darkness in the background. We've been through too much to let this dust get thick. Let me love you, let me let you love me. I'll look through your eyes and learn where the water comes from. I'll let go of my black and white and let the colors take over. Give me your kaleidoscope and I'll give you my heart. Nothing else matters now. Just you and me under the sky.

I'm So Sentimental

AS LONG AS YOU LOVE ME

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

EXCEPT FOR STOP SIGNS

AND WORLD HUNGER

AND OBVIOUS SHIT LIKE THAT

Stay Classy San Diego

When I stepped off the bus in San Diego, I could smell the vibrations and taste the heat. I walked to the hostel with a guitar on my back and a knife in my hand, afraid of everyone I passed. I was a little girl away from home, alone at last, but for the very first time. My blood ran acidic until I reached the gas lamps. There, the crowd smiled a collective smile at me. I realized that I was home.

I left half of my heart in your ocean, San Diego. I soaked half of my heart in your salt, Coronado. I thought I would stay there with you forever, serenading the streets with my hat on the ground for your coins to fall into. I thought I would start over with you, it's true, I thought I would never leave. 

I left half of my spirit at the Greyhound station. I left half of the wind in my lungs on the corner of 7th and Island. I left half of my brain on the concrete where the vagrants slept. I thought I would return for it, but now I don't think I ever will.

I came back to Denver with my strength doubled. I was bound and determined to do right, to be perfect. With a new life inside of me, with an expectation in my womb, I disowned my danger and denied my feet their dance. "I just want to be a good mom," I said. "That's all I want now." But I lied.

I need what I left with you back, San Diego. Send me my courage in the mail, Coronado. I need back the honey that fell from my lips there, that husky-voiced tune, my cartwheel into the ocean. I need my daughter, and I need more than my daughter. I need my self. I need Shelby. 

Maybe I'll see you again, San Diego.

Give me back what you took from me. 

I just need to be whole. 

#selfie

Here in our hearts where the sacred lies, we splay ourselves open like we unzip our coats. We use no discretion as we sow these wild oats. The cameras follow us to sleep like the paparazzi. Hashtag no makeup. Hashtag all natural. Hashtag no filter. Let the masses see us naked in the limelight as we litter. Our precious moments are on the ground like cigarette butts, our proverbial lungs are filled with cancer, and this girl on the other side, she wants to be a dancer. Pictures in her lingerie all over the worldwide, tangled in her own web, desperate to be fed. Our former selves didn't have the foresight to assume this narcissistic self-hate, our unironic minds that keep nothing private. MySpace top eight nostalgia, allow me to share my dreams with you. Affirm my worth and watch my days float down the river with me. Throw up your once-Poliroids, your weddings and your babies, your depression and your positive vibrations, show the world your life in albums and one-liners, what are we coming to if not to the bottom? I used to be in therapy but now I self-medicate with the use of all-new technology that gives me the power to write what I ate for lunch in stone, and code. It makes me feel important, like everyone cares, and everyone understands, but everyone lies. Hash tag forever alone. Hash tag but at least I have my cat. Rock yourself to sleep on the winds of this false security. Nobody cares that you can't sleep tonight. The dark is still dark when you turn on the light. And your life moves on, while you sit back, to get a photograph, of just, the right, angle, but you never step into your own picture, and live. 

I'm just ranting

I don't remember how to write poetry anymore. 

This is just the way it is now. Ever since my daughter was born, it's like nothing will come out. It's like she dragged all of my literary devices with her on her way out of my womb. She makes me too tired to pick up a pen and too happy to be depressed. I used to do my best writing when I was wide awake and hopped up on coffee at 2 AM. And I definitely used to do my best writing when I was depressed. So I think she's definitely the reason. She makes me smile too much.

It's a good thing. It really is. I'd rather be happy than write beautiful things. Eighteen-year-old Shelby would smack me for saying that, but it's just true now. I'd rather walk in the sunshine than write in the rain. 

I don't know if this makes me less of an "artist" or what. Stephen King insists that he writes better when his wife is happy, his life functional, his alcoholism and drug addictions all rehab-ed out of his system. Elizabeth Gilbert thinks the whole "tortured artist" trope is totally unnecessary, and you can be an optimist and a great writer. But frankly, I don't want to write like Stephen King or Elizabeth Gilbert, because they're really not that great (you know it's true). 

But then again, they're making all the money. J. K. Rowling isn't a tortured artist, and she wipes her ass with hundred-pound notes. Meanwhile, Jack Kerouac died poor and alone. So I guess what I'm saying is, maybe I got the really, really long end of the stick here. Maybe writing things inspired by my rainbows-and-butterflies-status happy life will make me loads of money. I just need to figure out how to make it come out of the typewriter.

I mean, where do you even start? I can't make the jump from writing Unitarian-Universalist we-are-all-one-soul prose and occasionally-semi-erotic, usually-littered-with-f-words, gritty-mess flash-fiction to writing like, Christian-inspirational non-fiction. Perish the thought. I would jump off a building rather than see my book sold at Family Christian Book Store, and if that makes me a bad Christian, I'll work it out with Jesus later. I just want to write something good, and good means not cheesy. If I'm a delusional narcissist for ultimately hoping that a novel that I write is assigned high school reading in the US by the time I die, then fine, but it's still what I want, and it's still not going to happen as long as I'm this blocked. I can't even type a line without having an anxiety attack anymore. Nothing I write is good enough. There's no darkness to pull from in my life, only light. I can't even explain how grateful I am for that, how happy I am to be so far away from depression that I barely remember how it felt. But at the same time, I need to find a way to write again. I need to find a way to fit within my skin all the things that I am, and all the things that I want to be: a good mother, a good girlfriend, optimistic and sunshiny, but also a good writer, an honest writer, a completely-opposite-of-cliche writer.

As soon as I figure out how to accomplish this, I'll bottle it and sell it, or I'll at least let you know.

Eighteen/Sixty two

A hunched old couple walks into my restaurant. "It's our first date," the man says with a straight face. The woman feebly slaps him on the arm with her wedding-ringed hand. They both laugh at this joke with a look between them that says, "We laugh together a lot." 

The man is wearing thick bifocals. The woman, I guess, forgot her glasses at home. He patiently reads her the print on the menu, too small for her to decipher alone. 

"We'll both have Chicago dogs," he says. 

"And Pepsi Colas," she follows. 

I ask them because I'm curious. Of course I'm curious. "How long have y'all been married?"

"Sixty two years," the man says with a proud smile. I feel my face muscles do a smiling dance. 

"Oh wow," I say. "How old were you when you got married?" 

"We were eighteen," he answers, those yellowing teeth flashing me again. "It was during the Korean War. Y'ever heard of it?" 

I nod like that isn't a stupid question. "Yes sir," I answer.

"Well we young men were getting drafted," he says. "That was the thing to do then. Get yourself a wife so you had something pretty to come home to." 

If I could describe the way his wife's eyes light up...it's less like a Christmas tree and more like Rockafeller Plaza. 

He pats her hand. "Yes ma'am," he says, staring into the air. "Sixty two years." 

"Congratulations to you," I say. I walk away slow, and hide my face as I round the corner. Then I start to cry. 

We Melt Together Like Grilled Cheese

Your idiosyncrasies are health to my atoms. My electrons whir with the noise of a ghetto-rigged toaster making sideways grilled cheese. Things have changed because we changed them. I have changed because of you. I am the noises you make. I belong to the looks on your face. When you have nightmares, I have nightmares. The more we melt together, the more I find of myself. 

Frankly, I can't say I'd be nothing without you. I'd be something. Something like a vegetable. Stagnant and bored, I'd smell like glycerine and disappointment. Luckily you're still with me. You're still here and I still matter. I still buzz with your electro-magnetism, and the toxic waste of our mistakes is too far down river to taste. 

No Fuhgiveness

I've seen him so many times, walking up and down these rough blocks on Larimer, singing low in a grumbly gospel baritone. He sings to the concrete, pointing at the sky. His words echo like a prayer at the wailing wall. 

"There's no fuhgiveness in Denvuh-town," he sings. "Never no fuhgiveness in Denvuh-town." 

---

The first time he asked me for some spare change, I tried to smile. "I don't have any cash on me, sir," I said. 

"SIR?" he laughed. "Sir is my father. You call me Bones, young lady. My name's Bones," and he took my hand and shook it. My whole damn arm flailed with his hand. I was dead-fishing the guy, my face in a tight, please-let-go-of-me stare. He went in for a hug, clap-on-the-back included, like he was welcoming an old friend. 

"Bones," he said again, his breath loud and stale in my ear. "Name's Bones 'cause alls I got left is my Bones." 

He laughed like that was the funniest joke he'd ever told, pointing at the sky again with a rot-tooth smile as he walked away. He sang it out, a deep cough interrupting his tune, "No there ain't NO fuhgiveness in Denvuh-town." 

---

For a good while, Bones gave me the creeps. Every time I saw him passing the windows near the restaurant I was bussing at, I would feel this sick twist in my stomach. I would remember that hug, that stenchy homeless man hug that left me feeling dirty for days afterwords, the way his big, dusty, cracked hand had enveloped my little one, and I would feel like he had gotten too close. Something about him had sunk into me, and I couldn't make it go away. 

---

Bones sleeps in what we call the Broadway triangle. Skinny white girls like me know not to walk in the Broadway triangle alone at night. The neighborhood around it is trying really hard to clean up. These trendy twenty-somethings keep moving in and moving up. Bars and breweries are making their home here, surrounded by the homeless. The cops that come into my restaurant tell me that the biggest problem in the Broadway triangle is crack cocaine. A sleeping-bag town thrives under the surface of this clean city, humming with desire, trading rock for food, trading rock for sex, trading rock for dignity. Old women, young men, black and white, all of them disheveled, creep through the alleys, covered in bruises and waiting for their ship to come. The local liquor store sells foil and those rose pipes more often then they sell liquor.

Across the street from that liquor store, these modern condos just got built. A woman stands on her patio, smoking a Parliment in thick sunglasses and manicured nails, watching people starving just two floors down. 

I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it feels wrong. 

---

One time Bones was out by the dumpsters at the restaurant while I was taking out the trash. He was just sitting on the concrete, looking up at me with glassy eyes. "Whas a guy gotta do to get some love around here?" he asked. He staggered to his feet between me and the dumpster. My first thought was, he's going to hurt me. My second thought was, Bones would never hurt anyone. 

I stared at him and realized I wasn't scared. 

"Love is everywhere, Bones," I said, and I flung the trash bag over his head before I walked back inside.

---

"No fuhgiveness in Denvuh-town!" I hear it now and welcome the sound. I give Bones cups of ice water. I know he'll spend my dollars on drugs, but I give them to him too. 

Would Jesus give money to Bones? I guess I don't know. I just do what feels right.

Maybe my stomach sinks every time it happens, but I let Bones hug me every day now. 

---

They wander the streets with bugged out eyes. The rich sleep above and the poor below. At least it's warm these summer nights. When other people are grateful for the rain, I just worry about Bones and his sleeping bag.

They wander the street with missing teeth. People hand them spare change. They give them pity and cigarettes. "No fuhgiveness in Denvuh-town," he sings. He takes the money and he takes the high. He's grateful for what he gets, but he knows that death will find him before the love he wants ever has the chance. 

The Best Year

It's been almost a year now, but I remember last June 24 so clearly. I spent the morning meditating under a palm tree on Coranado Beach. Something felt off somehow as I sat there, seeking peace. I felt prompted by intuition to take a pregnancy test. I took three of them in a Von's bathroom in a rich neighborhood, and had to sit there staring at them for a long while before what I was looking at finally registered.

Not one pink line, but two. They were all positive.

The first person I called was my best friend Kesheya. I won't detail her response in full (she probably wouldn't appreciate it), but suffice it to say it didn't go so well. (Later she made up for her inital response by being my most trusted babysitter and frankly, Paige's favorite aunt.) The second person I called was my friend Kate. She had just found out a few months before that she was pregnant with her first child - and she had ten years of life experience on me. She calmed me down and talked me through my options as I sat on the pavement in front of the store. I remember how hot the weather was that day, the way my shoulders felt against the brick wall behind me. Every detail registered as significant as I felt the world changing around me, as I listened to Kate tell me what I needed to hear: That no matter what path I chose going forward, it didn't have to define me. The choice belonged to me and to no one else. No matter what I did, she said that she would love and support me through it.

What's funny is that much of my panic over being pregnant was so...artificial. Something very deep inside me had known somehow that I was pregnant essentially from the moment that Paige was conceived. I had been pushing the thought out of my mind for weeks, but somehow I think my body was preparing my mind for what was to come. My soul knew that I was pregnant before I did. It didn't really take me by surprise the way it should have. And even though I panicked like a champ - the way all the Degrassi kids did when they were pregnant, the way I felt that I needed to I guess, I honestly believe that I knew the second I saw the plus sign on that little plastic screen what I was going to do. I was going to be a mom. I was determined to keep this child.

Everyone I called that day to share the news with (always one to broadcast, never very private, I guess) had a very different reaction than the one I thought they were going to have. The most surprising was from my old college roommate, Lindsay. Lindsay is from Pueblo. She is no stranger to teenagers getting pregnant and often subsequentally ruining their lives. As an ambitious, career-minded, no-nonsense girl, I was pretty sure she was going to tell me to get my ass in a Planned Parenthood and stop even thinking about having babies for at least the next ten years. But she was the most excited for me out of anyone. "You're going to be an amazing mom, Shelby." She was the only one who ever said that to me before Paige was born. That phone call made me cry and I still love her for it.

A few people have questioned why I was so sure, HOW I was so sure, that this life is what I wanted.  It wasn't about a religious conviction. Continuing my pregnancy and keeping my daughter as my own was never based on any pre-conceived notions I had about what is right and what is wrong. I didn't keep my baby out of a sense of moral obligation or religious duty. I decided to keep her because I wanted her. I loved her and I knew her from the moment I was aware of her existence (and there was never a single doubt in my mind, by the way, that I was having a girl).

Here I am on the other side of so many important, life altering decisions. I can honestly say that I'm proud of myself for what I have accomplished, for the mommy that I am becoming. The last year of my life has been a whirlwind, and it has been incredibly hard, but it has also been by far the best year of my life. God has blessed me with a beautiful, healthy, daughter, a new career calling, and the healing and redemption of my relationship with a man that I am elated to call my other half and my best friend. As a parent, I have been imperfect. As a girlfriend, I have had my struggles. As a daughter, I haven't been grateful enough. As a friend, I've been irregular about returning calls. But at this moment, I'm looking back on the last twelve months of my life, and they seem...perfect. Everything came together like a puzzle. Jordan fits me like a favorite pair of jeans. Paige lights my world up every morning with her smile. And as we all press further into our future together, I can look back and see where God has been working. I can look forward and see how much promise there is to come. I am grateful for everything that I have, and more grateful than I realized I would be that I made the decision in that Von's bathroom to get on an Eastbound bus, go home, and start my life all over. 

God's grace has been sufficient. And I'm happier than I've ever been. 

Nutmeg

The kids these days are smoking nutmeg.

Can you believe it?
The things we won't do for a high.

Chasing dream clouds is a nice enough pastime, until the taste of all the smoke goes stale.

When burnt lungs want oxygen, they'll find it in a dying black balloon. It's personal but, I found mine in love.

The things we won't do for our fix.

I write my fix letters with a quill.
If you come back you'll be wonderful. If you come back I'll be beautiful. If you come back I'll let you lie to me again.

I'm not proud of this.

I've noticed, if you take your brag book photographs of all those seedy nights you thought you were happy, and you wave them hard enough, the wind will start a dust storm.

I see faded Polaroids of destruction where others see a Kodak moment. Then they point out the quill in my hand. The plank in my eye.

I guess I'm getting older.

I only use nutmeg in my lattes,
and even then, it's only a pinch.

Lucky Charms

I am the benchmark
I am evolution
I fight the fire with fire
Caffeine veins and stuffy noses
Nothing new under the sun
Meaningless changes
To the Lucky Charms in my bowl
Why the swirly moons?

You won't find better than me
Darling, rest assured
They won't love you like I did

This Dark Machine

I came unprepared for this undrinkable sea-water mixture of responsibility and still there it is, desire. Did I think I could wipe clean the slate that had driven me into the machine? I went in full of wonder and came out with all my bones broken. It was a fairground I went looking for I think, but what I found instead was the kind of one-and-a-half-sided Rubik’s-cube love story that made me profess, I’d rather take a closed-fist beating from him than ever live through that again. This dark machine surprised me, a carousel on fire like a phoenix, leaving no ashes for me to rise from, and I only had dripping wax wings to madly flap toward the sun with, and fall into the ocean, and sink, dragged by the weight of what could have been a lot of Yankee Candles. I always liked the buttercream one the best.

The World Was Lighter Than Eight Pounds

In that beeping, whirring factory, they set the weight of the world on my chest. The world was lighter than eight pounds. She was sighing in dreaming. The room, now shaking with exhaustion, was still anchored to the quaking earth by a solid reality, an air-solid reality, a new breath adding carbon dioxide to where stores of waiting life had just been. Perfection has been manifested here, the pain edged off by seventy five years of promise in my hands. Her big grey-blue eyes show me where to look. Her hand fits around my finger, points it toward the concrete above us. I know I must have never really loved before now, bleeding from our family ties, grateful even still that I was ripped open, open by a ray of sunshine that struggled to get out. The sky needed more sunshine more than it just needed more me.

Handfuls of Sunshine

From summer to autumn and autumn to winter, whenever I came across it, I would bring him little handfuls of sunshine. “Look what I found for you!” It was almost a daily occurrence. The dusty yellow would bleed into the grey air that he breathed. My excitement was always genuine. I was always trying to crack the code. How do you make someone love you? Some days he would smile. Some days he wouldn’t. Most days he would put me out. He always wanted to close the blinds.

Slowly, I learned that you can’t straighten enough hand towels or cook enough meals or apply enough coats of mascara to be good enough for anybody. You can’t write enough letters. You can’t strategize; love is not a chess game. You can’t simplify; love isn’t exactly checkers either. All you can do is expect the stars to come out every night. All you can do is expect the sun to rise every morning. You can breathe in, you can breathe out. You can take some of your sunshine and begin to keep it for yourself.

Maybe everything that I did was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t sunshine that he needed anyway. Maybe it’s better that we’re free from each other.

I can’t believe all that yet. My hands are still heavy-laden with the light I wanted to share with him. But maybe someday I will believe it. Maybe someday it won’t be so hard.