We made it.
Q: It’s Hard For Me
It’s hard for me…
because know what love is
…because I know you…
love is…
love is you and me.
its hard for me…
because its hard for you…
hard for you too.
Easy for me to feel this
easy for me to see
hard for you and I to sleep
hard for you and I from deep
its hard for me…
but easy to cry…
easier at night…
a hard day’s light…
a hard shine blinds…
easy hard time…
its hard for me…
to see your dreams…
to hear your scream so silently..
same as you suffers all in stride
hard for me to see your heart open wide.
it’s hard for me…
to feel you next to me..
to notice that it was just a scene…
to wake and stare at whats only air..
knowing that you were just there…
its hard for me…
because want you…
because I need you…
because I breathe you…
and air is in short supply…
its like breathing in your dreams… suffocating… but never die.
its hard for me because it hard for you
its hard for us because its easy for us.
a natural love i lust to live.
its hard for us,
because the distance takes and takes and takes…
no matter how much we give.
-Q
A Birthday Surprise
This is an excerpt of a beautiful birthday surprise from my Q. He calls it Queen Day. This custom drawing he did in a card came coupled with a beautiful gold, green and brown anklet, that I can wear in real life. It’s meant to represent the world, the earth. Love.
-S
The Mid-Year Fast: Day 3, Discipline
Been meaning to document this for years, but Q spends time fasting for 3 days at the beginning of July. This year, he and I spent time building on it together and unpacking what it means to reconnect with self and to focus in on particular principles each day. Reconnecting with purpose. While I didn’t fast from food, I found other ways to practice mindfulness and build for me.
The Last Day of Fasting, Discipline – 2022, by Q
The result of dedication to a cause and determination to exact such cause is discipline. Discipline is NOT the natural state of mankind… it is the natural state of divinity. Everything in creation adheres to the natural law and there can be no law without the concept of discipline. When a person seeks to strengthen there discipline, they seek to become closer to their god-like selves… like every atom in existence, we are all, whether knowingly or unknowingly, apart of the structure of the natural ORDER.
Discipline – 2023, by S
Of the 3 Ds, discipline is the hardest of the concepts to grasp. There’s a realization that without a higher power a true belief in the divine, real disciple cannot exist. Meditation and prayer were an easy solution to feeling that closeness with the universe, and connection was made, there in the rain, reminding me what is. The insight – dedication is the why, determination is the goal, and discipline is the process. It’s time is forever and can only be guided by all three D’s existing at once. Finding the fire within myself to meditate while the rain falls — only to retain the deepest connections, and accessing peace when I choose it.
The Mid-Year Fast: Day 2, Determination
Been meaning to document this for years, but Q spends time fasting for 3 days at the beginning of July. This year, he and I spent time building on it together and unpacking what it means to reconnect with self and to focus in on particular principles each day. Reconnecting with purpose. While I didn’t fast from food, I found other ways to practice mindfulness and build for me.
Determination – 2022, by Q
Determination is what pushes me through to the other side of my goals. To set a course and move out on it, no matter the weather, this is the human capacity of determination. I, for myself, have determined a course to a higher, more whole self. But only once the mind is free, only then, can it follow through on its desires with determination, and makes them manifest.
Determination – 2023, by S
Determination is as grounding as it is fleeing. It is a force that can only stand to push forward.
Do not be afraid of determination because it exists, be aware and recognize that it exists when you create it. Do not be afraid because it cannot be contained in time. It cannot be rushed, it cannot be rewound. It can only be now, in this moment, and the universe will guide you the rest of the way. There are no limits.
The Mid-Year Fast: Day 1, Dedication
Been meaning to document this for years, but Q spends time fasting for 3 days at the beginning of July. This year, he and I spent time building on it together and unpacking what it means to reconnect with self and to focus in on particular principles each day. Reconnecting with purpose. While I didn’t fast from food, I found other ways to practice mindfulness and build for me. For the next couple days, I’ll post the writing from Q the year prior, and what I wrote this year.
Dedication – 2022, by Q
Dedication is what keeps bringing me back to the starting point to what could led to a grand arrival…
Year after year, I show a desire to want to purge the more base aspects of myself in hopes to obtain a clearer, more whole light on what known as the Self. This desire is summed up into 3 days of fasting. The initial principle to begin this quest is dedication.
Dedication is a fruit of the human soul–activating the most supernormal power available to human beings–the intelligence to see and comprehend, and the will to adiust– to manifest the exact product of a self-determined fate and its potential perfection.
Dedication – 2023, by S
When the word dedication comes to mind, my first thought in and OUT of meditation was other people. Just names, titles, more names. Nothing else. What’s more, I realized that I wasn’t on that list. It’s a wake up call for sure because how can I show up and be dedicated if I’m not taking the time to dedicate myself? I want to spend time working on defining what it means to dedicate me, and prioritize the intentions that will fill me to my best self. Dedication to self: mind, body, and spirit.
S: All That I Can Do
When I start to
think about you…
my heart gets heavy
and my knees get weak
trying to fill the void
of emptiness, I seek
anything to keep me
out of the dark stormy rain
that lives inside me.
When I start to
see the days go by…
My heart gets heavy,
knowing the things you’ve missed.
The life unlived,
and the kisses unkissed.
The wishes… still wished
that that day would soon come,
and the let downs would cease,
and in my arms you’d run
forever…
without the bars between us.
When I think about you,
but until then that’s all that I can do.
-S, 12/1/22
S: Manifesting the Bubble
3 years ago Q and I created what we call the bubble. It’s a spiritual space to which we exist together where it’s just us. We’ve historically referenced it as something that relates to how we start to change as people as it grows.
Well something happened okay visit on Sunday the 15th.
I was sitting across from him feeling an overall sense of gratitude for his presence. It had been over 3 weeks since I’d last been there, and 3 weeks since I’d gotten to wrap my arms around him and feel the since of safety I’ve only felt from his spirit. I held his hand with both of mine and held it close. I closed my eyes and I instantly filled with emotion through my whole body. Tears started form in my eyes. He held me closer and closed his too. I later learned he was praying. The moment was beautiful. I was relishing in the fact that he was real and he was just pure love in the flesh. It was like I couldn’t turn the tears off. He wiped my eyes as they filled my mask and neither of us had words for what felt like 5 minutes.
We then hear the lady at the desk call his last name. He gets up to go talk to her and I instantly felt alone again. When he came back, he told me they are not allowing us to hold hands. Both of us were crushed, and he had a clear sense of anger. I knew our moment wasn’t over, even if it couldn’t be physical.
I put my hands in front of me and put it on what would have formed a giant sphere. I told him to do the same, and there we were: with our hands on an invisible ball. We both started putting our hands around it. I asked him what it felt like, what it looked like, what it sounded like. We spent time building on it and following each other’s hands and fingers, to the point where I couldn’t tell which one of us was leading the other. We put our hands through it. Like water, he said. We then took our hands out and into our hearts. Like the ball was generating enough energy and positivity to recharge us as individuals.
It was powerful. A huge representation of how they can never take this from us. How our love is a ball of energy that we can create between us regardless of physical space. He called the ball of energy the bubble and it clicked immediately. Manifestation of the bubble.
Q even used it on his own. “I manifested the bubble by myself earlier. Just moved my hands like we did at visit and inhaled it into my heart.” Part of me has been afraid to access it due to the overwhelming emotional potential, but I’m grateful to know I have it.
The bubble is home, the bubble is us. The bubble exists regardless of time and space and physicality. Like God.
-S
Q: A Prayer – “Every Year of Forever”
God, Overseer of Our Days,
may every time we cross paths, it be an instantaneous rekindling of our love at
first sight for both of us.
May loving one another continue to produce the most beautiful experiences we shall ever
have… only we, together, can totally
understand the sweet dream that is our love.
Let us, before God and all under
the blue sky, before everything that
crawls, walks, runs, and swims upon
God’s green earth… profess and acknowledge what we know to be true – that our coming together is God’s work.
Let the love of two forever amazed by one
another, continue to shine throughout an imperfect world, perfectly.
God, may you conintue to use our love as your own and a shining example, as it can
inspire our friends and ever-growing
Family, by which that same love shall endure.
God, allow us the depth of your eternal grace, as we continue to remember: When we put our heads together, we create a world that’s even better.
We respect the awesome power that is God, as it has forged the framework for the eternal force that is our love — love that is now, love that was then, love that is still, love always, love will and forever shine it’s reflection, our reflection throughout the sands of time.
Separate bodies, kindred souls, rebounded back by the ultimate unifying force, God’s original form – love – fashioned from a rib, created to be side and side. May our joy continue throughout our lives as a reflection of your joy that spans an eternity – a love that is true and pure, a love that is absolute, that it is formless yet never changes… love, threefold and forever and ever.
Q: Manifesting Integrity
The penitentiary is full of desperation. In such a dark place for such a long time, the aliment of the human condition and all its imperfection is sure to come to surface. It is not hard to imagine how undervalued the virtue of integrity may be to a person fully submerged in the distractions of our modern society and all the demands that come from it. Even behind the prison walls, there is a heavy emphasis on respect (an essential concept for the coexistence of men forced to live in extremely close quarters), but integrity becomes more of footnote to such an idea.
I have been incarcerated for over a decade and one thing I’ve come to fully understand is that my power to change is firmly rooted deep within my sense of self — my integrity. In the menagerie of men, concrete, and steel, it is easy to drift into a sea of obscurity — a place where you can easily lose yourself… the acquisition of integrity is the only thing that can help you maintain. Maintaining your identity is a necessary key in the goal of greater self discovery and personal growth and the overcoming of the sad state that is arrested development experienced by many who are imprisoned.
To be a raindrop in the middle of the ocean and maintain your shape… that is integrity. I’ve found my search for greater integrity has lead me to seek a greater grasp on truth, admire honesty, and achieve a level of character that is solid, sturdy, and principled. I’ve found that in the course of being encouraged to be honesty with others, I’ve gain a more objective outlook in general and inevitably, I am more honest with myself– this is the strength of integrity.
I cannot imagine my life without being on this journey. It has improved my life immeasurably. My self image is incorrigible, my relationships have improved with family and friends, and I feel like there is direction for my future, even after being behind bars for so long. Purpose, cause, and destiny have all become perceivable to me through eyes of integrity.
-Q, 3/20/2022
Your Loved One, Q 