a clearing

your smile spun roving melodies through the still spaces in my connective tissue 

your name, pounding horns of yes, woke every follicle of nervous curiosity inside me

your song, a receiving line of ancestral blessing, of every life preceding mine claiming my breath as the living waters of their survival

your poetry slid the twisting channels of my ear canals, a warm quiver of time splashing the room in bright hues of our people’s whole living

the first time your skin traced its stories into mine, left its ink stain of hope spells clinging long after the soft smell of you trailed away, unleashing home in the texture of listening my feet now greeted the dirt with, i was a stampede of bells flickering awe 

the first time you returned I was tethered to the altar of grace and I promised to hold gently to the blush gift of you 

but the first time you didn't call a fault line heaved open, an avalanche of unresolved endings 

I reached and you didn't come and every shaking horizon, shrinking cacophony of familiar, latticed architecture of trust stuffed in a crawl space of loss, every haunting reminder of how long it can take to unclench

I never asked to form a safe room for wrestling my shadows in the filter of your arms, you stepped innocently in a hole in my earth covered over with fallen branches, where the thick of this love can quietly starve if I decide it’s too dangerous to offer my hand