Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong. *

― Quote by Lao Tzu

You touch me
from the depths
of my broken
spirit

You move me
gently to mend

what bold
alchemy is this

Turning my skin into
fine silk

I am renewed
by your fingers that
lightly tickle me into
submission

You are water
I am the stone

Mother I tempered with the forces
I became a villain in the story I've written
Mother remember me chasing pavements
The ardency of the gnaw
The absurdity
Mother remember the box of darkness
The dirt in my fingernails
When the moon fell
And my guts sat heavy on my chest


Mother remember, the sweet sun on our backs before the severing from the cradle you sang to
The wind was a lullaby
Blue stained onto my faculties
Mother impending doom sits
In the pit of my stomach still
Mother don't worry, I quietened the blood
I stitched the hem of the undone
The sunrise in the east breathed life into my body
And those hands
Mother I made a home out of a bruise