Café con Cass story & design portfolio

I sit across from you.

I am waiting for the story that I have already narrated within my own mind,

steps before I arrive at your door.

I was not waiting for an embrace

I had no expectations of meeting you,

which is how you managed to make your way within my heart so quickly.

I step into the studio; there is no discussion of the night we shared

Or the present frustration in the mind of an artist

You hold your pen as you would the paint brush.

“Just a moment,” (he says).

I know how this scene will play out and I do not bother thinking if it was fate.

Or the culmination of where I wanted to be.

In defiance, self-reliance I pull out my book to accompany the feverish pace,

Do not apologize for thinking quickly, I am right where you are, in your presence of me.

I pick up the pen to write this poem and you finally engage.

I can see it clearly now,

It took the presence of a beautiful woman to inspire you to complete the task at hand.

30 minutes pass and I know that I have extended my stay, not by your accord,

But by my standards,

Just as I had pushed you away when we kissed because the erotic for me

Is not limited to lips that touch.

I shared more with you in conversation than to the first man that I had slept with,

Who I never told I was a virgin for my sex is something that can not be taken.

I am admiring strong arms and see you taking glimpses of my chest

As soon as I remove my jacket and you see my blouse,

The pen commits to paper and an idea is born

having lingered in the cobwebs of your mind,

I awaken from this moment;

I have been your muse.

And You have been mine –

There are lesson in women that I could not teach you at the cost of integrity, my friend…

While everyone thought wer were fucking, the only uglies we were bumping were the immutable

insecurities that rubbed off on you and me at all hours of the day.

The girl from the futon they’d say,

A little bed from the Doll’s House, I was addicted to the comfort of your four walls.

I had all my love for you, and you the love of control.

Manifested in my inability to leave your side.

I listened to you speak for countless hours only confronted with the overwhelming feeling

Where my lips wanted to melt int yours int he throws of a passion

Blinded by co-dependence.

You listened to me recount stories of my father

And looking back maybe you had only been taking notes to keep me at bay.

I deemed you attentive, I took pride in the reflection you have me

And no other women with whom you even shared a bed with.

Arranged marriages with the prospect of an apartment.

Love there was so much

with out touch

That made me woman.

We shared women and used them together

I was one of the boys denying the essence of who I was supposed to be,

When I left you, I left a part of me back to the arms of my father in servitude

I could not grieve the loss of my mother until I confronted my own.

Women healed the scars that no one could see.

The abused needs the abuser as much as he or she;

Committed to a life of suffering no longer –

It was time for me to be a woman.

The Latina who was told when she got breasts at 10

That she was not the one they dated, but the one they marry,

I hid my chest as my own mind became the ultimate prison.

Never allowed to be the friend I wanted to be

And kept in the shadow of my mother beaten behind closed doors,

At 15 I went into the arms of another only to invite the use that I had accustomed to be.

I thought was love when he made me touch him

And my fault when I bled in the backseat of the car of my father;

It took me years to understand what rape was.

From him to the arms of a woman to another;

Today I stand before you as the greatest love

I have ever known

is the heartbreak

that is the relationship between

My own mind and body.

I did what any teenage girl, woman and child would do and I cut my hair in duress

Denying everything that was feminine about me

If I had taken it away

Then NO MAN could EVER take it away again.

I am deconstructing every lie that was told to me and rebuilding this house with my own hands.

I contemplated as I fell asleep whether or not I would survive my unconscious

And rise with the sun the following morning.

I felt like dy-ing,

I felt closer to dying than the morning I had ingested a bottle of IB Profen at 17.

In my heart, overwhelmed with grief

I know this feeling of death

Is the

Strongest

Indication of living that I have ever had.

I have written myself to a bloody pulp of self retrospection.

Every word that I write,

I feel as though beats me.

I am raw.

I see two women with black eyes walking among us in the streets.

I make eye contact in the effort to show warmth,

As tough to embrace souls without touching

I weep for her in fear that my love of humanity will lead to my own demise.

I stand rooted in the Earth for my demise is delusion –

Which keeps self doubt alive to give birth to faith.

Is it because you can not see my scars, I am so deeply connected to yours that meets my eye.

I see myself in you, my sister.

There is an older woman that I know whose scars I have seen,

Hiding behind a man that I have no seen.

My intuition screams at a young man standing beside you who does not acknowledge me

When I speak with her.

I know in this world there are sons who beat their mothers.

And I don’t know how to speak otherwise.

I feel confined to a secret that has only been defined by my unconsciousness.

I weep at night and I am plagued by a familiar feeling;

I can not scream for you in the world of my own silence.

I stand rooted in the Earth, silent no longer

As I have discovered myself in you

And have begun to heal in the eyes of Mother.

I carefully tuck in the bruised child, the wounded teenager, and sing them to sleep.

I am woman now.