In honor of spring, I’ve dug this little gem out of one of the many unmarked-but-filled journals in my desk. My poor children will one day find all of these scratchings and will have to make sense of them, or they may chose to burn them (I will be gone and won’t offer protest). I hope some of my words survive. So they know the normalcy of a heart, wild-raging and how undefinable a life really is.
Sown
I am wakening
though this small seed planted
seems stagnant
and it is cold and dark
the surrounding day
so dense and ungiving
but the seed is planted
and every seed has
potential
for awakening
And this seed...
I know her concrete shell
her impervious coat
you think the darker,
the colder,
the absolute absence of love
would kill her
dead pod in ground
served justice for even thinking
of blooming on her own
But you do not know this seed,
no one does
except me.
I knew when I plucked her
from my heart in the solitary depths of
lovely dispair, and whispered
incantations of self-worth
of imperviousness
of an unbreakable shell
an unkillable flame
the magic was set and
it no longer needed
what living things needed
to survive
because she is survival
and her words will tendril
into the hard pack of your indifference
and she will feed off of your apathy
and she will shoot forth
arms to the sky
that you cannot hold down
with guilt or obligations
or crocodile tears
because she is the boundless
and unshakable irreverence
of me,
and I will awaken
in the absence of your love
Sarah Reichert Author 