First frost
riming the landscape
A white dawn
Announced by the crow's harsh call
The waning moon hanging
In a cloudless sky
As the rising sun's rays
Twinkle on the frosted fields.

I've felt vulnerable fully clothed and confident when confidence is all I have on-
Vulnerability is more than being bare for someone to see it all.

It is shedding the coat of bitterness because it ignited fires in my heart that sought to burn me down with it.

It is unbraiding the strands of hair coiled into a tight braid of rigidity, of being so tense and stern.

It is peeling off the shirt of past hurt, one that threatens to shrink tighter every time I wash it with my tears.

It is untying the shoelaces that bound me to a path I didn't foresee, a path I cannot forge and a path that does not lead me anywhere but where I have already been.

It is sliding out of a sheath of selfishness, one that clothes me in want and doesn't serve anything I need.

It is ******* all of my preconceived notions of how to live, why people hurt and why I still do regardless of the joys I have seen. It is stripping myself bare of façades and painted faces, the kind that insist I am fine when I am so far from it and closer to the dark than ever before. It is opening my mouth to cry and to ask for help even when I am blind to the hands reaching for me. It is admitting that I struggle to get a grip and some days I can only grip myself into a hug and hope for more.

Vulnerability is more than being skin and bone exposed- it is seeing past that with the naked eye.

The past—
moth-wings, dust-thin,
dissolving at touch—
markings
worn thin
as river stones,
voices replaced
by the wind—
only faint rustles
remain—
blended into
the silence of time—
who remembers
the hands
that built
the forgotten roads,
the scratch
of ink
before it dried
on a forgotten parchment.

Somewhere,
a hand
once carved truth
into stone—
now the rain
speaks of it
but no one listens.

We are pack animals
A tribal people
The human race
Beyond retrieval
All we ever need
Is to be accepted
Wanted , loved
And not rejected.

Don't see yourself as the nuisance
Before the pain
Or see yourself as the cloud
Before the rain.
                  Instead
See yourself as the credit
Before the prize
And the love that shines
from your children's eyes.