I straighten my back, and shoulder blades take on a new meaning. Tension stretches its hands around my neck and claws my skin at the same time—like twisted thorns clinging to the seams in my shirt. I laugh sometimes
that I can’t tell if the creaking is from my bed or my back, but while people are responding with “Work on better posture” or “You’re too young to feel like this,” I’m nodding my head with the strength of my last coffee.
To the girl I knew six Octobers ago, it hurts to see the way your sweater matches your eyes, because I know they turn gray sometimes like the storm cloud you zip up over your shoulders. You haven’t found the right language yet, so you speak in knotted strings and layered sleeves, but that’s okay. I wish I could tell you that you are heard, but there’s a steadiness in my voice you wouldn’t recognize.
Do you remember it? The day I first said I’m weak—it took a week to say it all; I misspeak about the thoughts in my mind, and I had to rewind when the wheels would squeak. I’m not derailed, just a bit misaligned. I know my head should unwind, but I’m afraid of critique.
She has a bookshelf for a heart and a current of ink for veins. Her skilled insight and works of art are creativity’s sweet gain. She’ll write you into her story with the quick quill inside her brain.
From between dark cedars and whiskered pines, spring steps out. In the blush of redbud tree’s purple blooms, wildflowers burst forth from hidden winter tombs. Against the backdrop of elegant purple, trees about don their veils so white. Soft leaves appear, dotting green on the maple trees. The spring is here.
This is golden day: a single moment that lasts for hours. I am standing in this field of brown, crisp grass and stubborn wildflowers, where the scent of summer stays. My feet are rooted in the dark earth. My eyes are closed, but my mind is open, absorbing the liveliness of this world.
I feel it, a certain heaviness in my heart as I’m making my way home one evening. Joy and Sorrow are very nearly always together, are very nearly always mine to hold—every mountaintop and every valley: my story.
Are you my friend? You have always cared for me, caught my tears, catered to every color I tried to dye my hair. You didn’t mind the dirt when I dug spaces in the garden, and I smiled at how gently you guided flowers to fill them.
Why does heaven feel closer in the woods? I ask that as if I do not know the answer. Maybe I simply want to tell myself why. The sky is closer up here in this tree, and the forest is where I pour myself out, always hoping, always asking to be filled back up—but not with what I had before. Never what I had before.
“Tell me, Wind,” said Rain, “you who catches me in your cool embrace, what it means to wander, to wander the world, to want no direction.”
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