Tag Archives: Identity

The trees have secrets in their leaves,
proclamations and patterns in their veins
like us connected without seeing,
our minds and eyes knowing nothing
of the intricacies of our energies

soft light comes
raining through the air,
between branches, buds, and
blossoms frozen brown in April’s frigid sky,
geometries shadowed against the cold ground,
words tattooed on the musculature of our hearts,
patterns of proclamations sharing old stories,
pouring acid after all of our oxygen is gone.

Now declaring, telling new tales,
ripping roots out of loose earth I hear
the breaking, releasing of tortured habits,
all those familiar patterns, discovering they were the only thing I ever knew.

I love hearing the sensation of
hair-thin root systems snapping when
I pull them from the ground and shut my eyes against
flying dirt. I do this now – pull these tortured, worn, and
shredded thought patterns, feel the muscles around my shoulders
tighten, close my eyes against the bursting soil while I listen to the pull-tug-snap of systems built to keep me quiet, asleep, dizzied, and drained.

I have secrets
now and so do you,
those peace-filled patterns
of pure light flowing through covered
conduits of darkness throwing their sparks against gray sky
and I, I, I,
I claim them.

They are mine and you are theirs and we are
ours inside a new pattern emerging, giving, allowing
us to gather gratitude for just this one birth
now this one
now this and this and now
I come raging with aliveness
Now I shake the ground and all the systems come crashing down around this

and now this birth and
this one still and still one more each day
each breath I birth myself again, oxygen and acid,
again again and again I pattern myself, tattoos on the inside of my own heart

because no one will ever ask me
why I was not the birch or the oak tree,
the beech or the maple, the locust or magnolia –
they will only, only, only ever ask why I was not the real me –