A Wound/A Cave/A Heart

Light shining, I travel inward Toward a wall, an end of pain A ceasing of bleeding A firm boundary

Deepness bewildering, yet expected Fissures torn, tunnels snaking A dream, a nightmare An ending, a beginning

How will the light meet the end? The healing gouge The crystalline dead-end The lightening in my rib cage Time is not god But it still rules us all Pain is fleeting But also bone-deep

Yet still I will find That wholeness, that ending, that astounding love Light will search no more At least not in my being

Let it shine toward other ends Let it shine toward other starts Let it shine ad infinitum Let it shine

Kind, Encouraging, Living, Learned, Infinite

Forget men Strong women make good times For themselves But bad times For the men Who are supposedly strong But weak enough to try them

Covered in blood Knife in hand You carved your own path No matter what, no matter how far, no matter how painful

Things have tried People have tried Your own body has tried But still you stand Even when it's hard

You didn't need bad times To make you strong But the bad times Couldn't defeat you And onward you move Even if you have to crawl Turtle-like, protected by the shell you grew from the seeds of experience

Remember Remember Strength is strong But softness is even stronger And you will inspire others To do their best, even at their worst.

That's the real, true strength

Of a warrior

Of a bard

Of a magic-maker

Of you

Wooden

She was lost in the forest, that was clear. 

No matter how many times she walked an apparent straight line, she kept coming back to the strange, gnarled tree with the hole in it. It looked like it would make a good home for an owl, a squirrel, something. But it also looked far too murky-dark, too deep, like an abyss.

And she noticed, even though she felt she wasn't supposed to, that she was changing with every passing. She was growing. She was blooming. Her clothing changed and morphed from one outfit to the next until it all became a gray blur.

Still, she tried to get out, tried to claw her way out of the moon-soaked forest. She eventually stopped looking toward that tree and looked for the REAL way out. It certainly wasn't forward. She learned after all this time that forward led nowhere. She stopped and looked from side to side but the edges were blurred, just like she was becoming.

Backward. Maybe she had to go backward to make this all stop. She began to walk backward, but didn't make it far until something (or someone) grabbed onto her. It was an arm, and a hand, coming from that endless hole in that ugly tree.

And it looked a lot like her own hand. Her own arm.

She tried to pull away, but this only caused the hand to grab on more tightly, white-knuckling her. More and more came out of the tree, attached to the hand, the arm. A shoulder. A head. A chest. A belly. Limbs.

And there She was, standing before Herself. But this She wasn't blurred. She was dressed vibrantly and almost glowed under the moonlight. "I've got you," She said, pulling the blurred Her into an embrace.

Herself collapsed into a pile of wood at the brilliant Hers bare feet. Glowing, she stepped over the jumble of sticks that used to be Her and exited the forest.