(Excerpt from personal journal, 6/2/22)

Help me to grow into the shape of the world. Branching, reaching, tugging from the center. Filling all available space – extending into emptiness.

Fractal trees on fir tips, translucent shards, universes of tensely held atoms. The world in the world, not just the world behind the world.

The ice is melting too quickly. The snow receding faster than my heart can carry pace. The solace in the solitude, hovering above the mist. With such tenderness in the heart, it suits to be here perched on an upper branch clinging onto winter. The wind howls down the chimney and stirs my mind.

Can’t I linger a while longer where everything allows itself to sleep?

The skeleton bones of the earth protrude like broken limbs from the thin veneer of high-altitude forest. They tell me about my age. They tell me about my fragility, that thin peach skin, the pierce of a blade.

Not a place for a soft mammalian body. Not in the sacred deep of winter. A branch makes contact. I breathe out and let in, I let myself be brushed and explored by the strangeness of wooden fingers.

The breath arises – already here. The breath subsides – nowhere to go.

Crystals pour down from the skies. Tears flow down my star-studded ruddy cheeks. A step shudders breaking underground caverns. A maiden without hands, tearing into the dark night, stumps bleeding, appendages mocking, skin taut over ribcage, unsure whether she is wolf, human or bird. A little girl sits alone in a corner teaching herself never to miss anyone or anything. But now the game’s up and her heart is too wide that it contains the entire oceans and the soft pulse of deep hibernating time.

Help me to grow into the shape of the world