I puzzle over what it means to trust.
I lean into my own feminine instinct, then catch myself afraid I'll fall backwards into the void.
Stop myself too soon before take-off.
I dare. Not.
Who can I be when they've taken my essence from me?
Or is it mine to give away freely? Am I blaming you for my own foul shortcomings?
I worry you can not take from me what I am unwilling to give.
I fear I've nursed the wrong pup at my breast.
And when my fear rises to its climax, I open.
I feel, but it takes silence to feel.
I touch, but keep my fingertips sheathed.
Learn to experience the world through the edges of my being
Maybe I don't have to push so hard
Maybe my life doesn't need to move so fast.
My muscles relax when my mind learns to be silent.
My breasts press into the earth and surrender becomes flight.
Freedom comes when I embrace bondage.
I can only breathe when I stop struggling against the chains.
My body, weak and frail as I perceive it, shouts into maw-ears
I can't. You're forcing me. You are taking from me what's not mine to give.
I present my hip flexors with a list of demands
And they laugh and crumple me into an old hag.
I let loose and my body remembers youth.
I am relearning to be what I am now for the first time.
It can be perplexing. I expect to know
What my body needs to feel.
Give is not an invitation to take,
Love not a path to abandonment.
Patience, my trick for rendering time void.
I am feminine in my mastery of time.
In my command of fathers, a daughter
With her brains bashed and lost.
I don't need to force it.
I don't need.
Yet it's coming my way, regardless.
