lion garden

when I was a child, I thought like a child,
I dressed like a child, I ate like a child
A child sees in us no faults, a child tells in us no cold,
But what is untold is not unknown
And so
I slipped into the garden
Between the trees, between me
And whatever else i’m supposed to be
The earth and I like strangers, shoving love notes
Underneath each other’s doors
We planted flowers
Roses, dandelions, lilies—I love the lilies
And in this garden I, one night, took a walk.
With steps that would have mattered, long ago, and now I’m not so sure
Where we are going.
But walk we will, step after step into the dark
Into the dark.
And the roots take over, cover me in earth
And sprouts, tiny sprouts grow from my eyes, my lips,
My fingertips
And tiny petals emerged like fireflies, like stars
In the dark. Between sidewalk stones and under rocks
Living in the shadows,
We all live in shadows, either we admit it or we don’t.
And the tiny white specks of the flowers
Filled my to the brim of
Light and wonder, often of Forgetful
And of remember
And of everything remembering has ever been to me.
And the flowers, long anticipated, long awaited, long forgotten
And served too cold for revenge and too present for forgetful any more,
These days,
These days the garden was remembered, and when it bloomed, it bloomed inconquerable
As I stood there in the lilies, feeling earthquakes deep beneath
In the core of whatever it is I believe myself to be
Until the trees, together, grew to be a lion,
Between myself and what I am
A lion that was fearless, that was fear and that was everything—sometimes fear is everything
Whether we admit it or we don’t
And she was one who would admit it
And one who would live on
In all my broken chains and broken wings
She could fly, you know, but she never did
She found it naïve to watch the clouds
Naïve to count the waves upon the ocean
And I knew what she was, bitter and unflinching, and I said she was wrong
And the lion spoke, in quiet whisper,
Crashing, roaring, human voice
In every moment, gnawing, growling, growing, vindicated,
Shaking, stirring, reaching,
And in eyes of fire newly kindled,
We met between the trees and the roses that rule the east,
We were, we are the wind, invisible, indivisible, invincible
And it blew into us as we blew back,
Shaken, breakable and broken
Living, and dying for it
And in that moment, the sun went out, and we, the two of us, made our own
In a revolution
Of what we ever thought it meant to live
We were immortal,
We were everything, we were, if anything is, alive,
Alone, insatiable, and insecure
Like light from a fading flashlight,
And there, despite all of my misgivings
I drank the air the flowers exhaled,
And, throwing off the veils
I listened, saw, drank, danced, and spoke
And, spinning too fast, lost track of who I was, and what I was,
And where,
And which of us had said the words
The words I didn’t think I had, I didn’t think she had,
They curdled on our tongues before we spoke
But I looked up, and she looked down and me,
While the trees were telling fortunes
And one of us, or both, or maybe neither,
Maybe pieces of us all said, shouted,
Whispered, “I am woman”,
And darkness, vengeful, crashed upon us all.