I don’t know why I love like this…in stops and starts. It’s either fully or nothing at all. It’s always some great burst of affection and then absolute emptiness. I don’t know why my heart yearns for the things that aren’t good for me. It’s been 10 full moons since I discovered my worth. The first one was red and stranded in paradise. I was broken and it was whole and shimmering. I wanted to trap it in my teeth and suck out the star dust. I wanted to wade into the ocean with rocks tied to my feet. I wanted to stop feeling everything all at once.
I left my shoes in the water.
Since that wild December I have learnt to breathe by myself. There were moments of absolute suffocation where it felt like my grief would consume me. There were moments of clarity that shrouded my soul in vanilla and told me I can do this. I can walk away. I can cut people out. I can decide to wear yellow and put daisies around my waist and stare my demons in the face and tell them that they do not deserve a piece of my narrative. You are dead to me. The me that let you overwhelm my peace is dead to me. There is only growth left. There is only the soil I was planted in that June evening when you cried false tears over my affection and called it love. There is only me. Wrapped in wildflower petals and sunshine and soft piano solos, I have risen out of the grave you tried to bury me in.
This year I have learnt to collect my own flowers. Sweet winter daffodils in angry pots, old oak trees with snapping limbs and short tempers, gentle vines of jasmine, with delicate branches and wilting roots. I have learnt not to need the flora. I do not want to be part of any garden unless I have grown it myself. There are sunflower seeds in my lungs.
They will bloom wherever the light takes me.
Dalliance 