I woke up and I wasn’t, me anymore
I had the emaciated body of someone starving on a full belly
Of a broken promise, shaped like a hennaed woman
I took off my wig, spectacles, teeth
And the skin child stood empied beneath quizzical stares
Tested for her taint
The diagnosis throttled me
Nymphs in weeds
The uncertainty held me down
Poisoning in vogue
The loss sat like a stuffed bear
Snarling without glee
The smell of bonfire on my skirt
Mud beneath my eyelids caking sight
So many labels, sticky to the touch
Like toffee left to run, patching over who I would have become
If warm nightmares hadn’t stirred
An unease as vigilant as a curse
Wondering, whether to unlearn
Bravery, a tarnished metal band
Playing for the hard of hearing 
How to train a slack horse
To regain the urge to bolt from his stall
As sleek as otter, sweat steaming in fridgid air
Beseachment riding, her violin back
From small things can come great change
Tamarind stains mandala, winking in the earth’s center
Bend to listen, hear the wet hoofs thunder and grind to dust
Those somber things of past
Where tensed against expectation
Rain poured like a singular thought
Blotting out sound with puckered mouth
In carousel prayers, lie the warm seed with violet heart
Whosoever nurtures patience, may again discover
As from frost comes first flower, urging from dormant
The spring of hope, pure and boyant as you recalled
Returning home after passage through hell
See the signs and wonder, when before you missed out
From nothing comes Renewal, staining her skirts in dew
Unafraid of the unknown, a journey we grow into
Chasing nothing but the feeling of sun, filigree elm branches
Now free of the weight of snow, rosey buds unfurled and supplicate
As we divine beneath, with grateful hearts
Voyager of ourselves and the might of stars