After so many words, what
is there left for me to say to you?
What have you not heard out
of my mouth?

Shall I speak of you, then?
Shall I sing your praises to all who come?
What can be said that could paint you
as you appear before my eyes?

Do I say to them, when I was a stone she
was what taught me to relearn
my flesh and feel, when I
was glass shards shattered she taught me
to fingerpaint with the blood welling
up on my hands where I tried to put
myself back together and savor
the beauty of its red, when I am
a bird I would cut off my wings
for the chance to sing to her where
she is perched atop the poplar?

Do I tell the tale of how I thought to take
the stones you carry with you on
your back and gently lift them, one
by one, how I tried to convince you to leave
the pieces of your burden behind
where I had laid them down
by your feet, how when you would
not be persuaded I offered
to take them up myself and how you
refused me?

Do I describe the girl made of paradox, she
who carries the heaviest load with the
lightest tread, and among
her many laughters, one is the truest
expression of joy I have ever known and
it is the one she spills from her
lungs as a smokescreen, and her presence
overflows from the room as she tries
to reel the rivulets back in?

All this I would say to them.
All this you already know.

But to you I would say, you are not
a creature of the light, nor
are you one of the dark, not of
the shadows nor the twilight nor the
morning. You live at the shadow's edge, where
it is gray with light half-turned, neither
of it nor not, and make of it
something all your own.