We write it and we destroy it
Do with it what we see fit
Tear it up
Burn it, hide it below dead js in a cup
Like our souls
Like the cigarette burn holes
In our shirts and our arms
Our sleeping bags
Awoken to forever-under-our-eyes bags

My daughter says
every tree has a soul.
Some are good, some are bad.
But always, a soul.
My daughter is young enough
to know these things.

My daughter says also
some trees have a spirit.
(But only the good trees.)
People, too.
She is old enough
to say these things.

Guided by spirit, we can grow
from the crack in a boulder.
We can lift sidewalks.
We bend and yet are strong.
We flower, we bear fruit, we give seed.
We are where the raccoon sleeps,
the hawk nests, the monkeys play.

Without the spirit we twist,
we wither, we break.
With the spirit our roots take hold.
My daughter knows. So young, so old.

She was told from
an age so young
that she indeed possessed all
the magic she needed
within herself
to set
the world
to right.

She placed daisies in
her long black hair
and skipped to the beat of
the songs her mother
had sung to her
before she left
escaping
her father.

She was often alone
rarely with friends as
she found comfort in the faeries
she spoke and sang to while
the wind
gently blew
hair in
her face.

She giggled when with
her only little sister
the best part of her world
to whom she adored more than
the breaths
she took
each and
every day.


She stood firm at home
never allowing
her father’s drunken words
to penetrate her self made wall
of anger and despair
because inside
her mind
there
were angels.

She closed her eyes at night
wishing the demons
to disperse into the heavy winds
that howled through the rafters
reminding her
she was
in fact
alive.

© Sia Jane