Sometimes, whilst one is going through the previous year’s poetry to put it all together, one finds something written by a kinder heart. I wrote this with a kinder heart. A heart that (erroneously, okay) started to open in the presence of gentleness. It’s a trip, knowing this feeling existed once, inside my chest. I guess that poetry is good for being the time capsule that reminds you, occasionally, that love was almost. I guess it is also, sometimes, good for reminding you that you were right to have put rocky ground between you and others.

Rocky Ground

the path to my heart

is unjustly perilous

even for me

the travesty of sharp drop offs

make it nearly impossible

to find to enter to heal

this hermit atop high summit

has banished herself there

a strong fortress

to defend against love

and all the ways it has

failed and fooled and lied to her

better the quiet solitude

and steep loneliness

better than to be drug down

the mountain ever again

I made the trail to my heart

impossible

but your steps are soft

respecting the land

the danger and beauty

of it,

just as it is

ever onward, every upward

to gently knock on

the spiked door

shrouded in thorns

and ask

I am still at home

am I here?

You’re here

want to come out?

the sunlight is beautiful

and I brought you

an apricot

to share

its only me

its only love

I exist,

I’m here,

even if you don’t

open the door

I’ll wait