“Anyone pulled from a Source longs to go back.” – Rumi
On days when I wake up angry at you,
I try to be fair.
I remind myself how I envy cats,
their ability to curl themselves into
any shape, surrounded snugly with a body.
I remember, I fell asleep last night
with my knees drawn to my chest,
the gentle curve of my spine
a boat I entrust with my soft mess of self,
enclosed by a warm, liquid dark.
I do not know from experience
how to love someone
without making them into a womb.
Yet, my anger insists,
I do not know how you loved me,
the tenderness you wrapped around you in the dark,
while rejecting my poetry, my constant pull to the woods,
the forces that created me.
I do know, when I left,
there was a tear as big as the sky,
a void that swallowed every sound I made.
Your voice sounds different now,
no longer as close and thick as my own thoughts.
Even when your words do not speak grief,
it sounds lonely.
This morning, when you texted your most recent heartbreak,
I did not rush around you like the tide.
I went outside to the bed I’d built.
The young, green shoots surprised me –
I’d thought the soil barren.
They peered straight up,
as if to climb into heart of the sun,
unafraid of catching flame.