I want to be a fruit tree
I want to grow something
joyful and bright and round as a plum that people could hold it in their hand and call it precious

I want to root into the earth
delivering freedom, arms open singing a cry that cracks at the sky to all gods listening
I want us to cry at the same time
because we're destined to cry for each other

I want to look down upon the pink flesh, familiar because it's my home, extended
my skin stretched out to be a fort for another, a shield and then a home
I want to be a shield and then a home

I want to give them a forest to hide in for solitude
or a labyrinth if they choose, and I'd understand why

I want to give them the mountain, the power to ascend
the hermits path unwinds for them as initiation
I want for us to always be connected
like the jewels that tremble inside caves awaiting discovery, how they owe their sunrise to the pressure of the night before.

I am not here
an old friend is waiting in my place
taking messages

I lie in bed and ask
where are you?
(I'm seeking myself)
all I hear back is
Not here.
Not here.

I try to remember
when I last felt like me
when my life felt mine
not foreign
I can remember tremendous pain
and since then
time has passed
without me in it

Separated for
hundreds of days and nights
where I am nowhere at all
I wonder, do I sometimes wake up in this world
this new life
and look around
before retreating again
retreat into the dark

I am floating
not here
not anywhere
I am not alive but I am
there is no root
there is no path back
there is no return at all
Only forward

My rebirth has taken 9 months.

The wind makes herself known to me
This grey Sunday
The day after love in February
She's breaking roots
My armour is cracking
My eyes drip
A cave system internal
Sits unexplored

I'm a stone fruit without any flesh
Raw and drained
I sit under the moon
She is milky and full
I see her face for the first time

I dream of being reborn in her moonlight
The soft grey shadows falling behind me
Shadows I will never see

I beg the stars to be my guardians
Each a messenger
A talisman
A treasure

Tonight I want to be delivered my fortune
To be full again like a plum

I'm a flower in concrete
My history deep in dust
Brightness is calling
The future is a tower to climb

Look deeply into my eyes
Get lost
Take note of how I feel
now that
My husband has died

Everything is grief
Everything is silent

I watch the light fall behind the trees again
Every day the light calls to me
Keep going
This can't be my death bed

I am made of salt
and bone

I am writing a book
By living

This is the ending
your vows foreshadowed
you sung out
'til our story is told'
and here I am
writing the final chapter

The storms stop today
coven
give me solace
as I burst open
like a dark spell

Your last embrace
burrowed deep into my shoulder
you were trying to find ground
I looked to the ceiling
begged it to crack open
to rain down dust upon us
celestial beings to steal me away from this
horrifying outcome

From this
opening

I need a waiata
I need a war cry
I need to summon a god
across the water