Unlearning
I called like the wind through trembling reeds,
a soft whisper of wanting;
just a sound,
a beckon of lips to lips,
innocent as the hush between tides.
But as the note fluttered into the open air,
I felt winter return.
A frostbit memory clawed at my bark,
words once carved into the grain of me:
I am not your dog.
This kind of love is leash and insult.
And so, I stood still,
a tree aching with rings of silence,
learning again to fear my own bloom.
Yet he,
like spring daring the earth to thaw,
leaned in
not with scorn,
but sunlight.
His lips met mine not as answer,
but as understanding.
His smile cracked the ice beneath old roots.
He said,
“I love when you do that.
It’s so cute. I can’t say no.”
And in that warmth,
I remembered how to photosynthesize.
Not all touch scorches.
Not all love comes with pruning shears.
Some hands tend the wildflower,
not to change its color,
but to watch it turn toward the sky.
Each morning,
he coaxes the moss from stone,
calls the rivers back to their course in me.
I unlearn the drought.
I forget the fire.
I remember the meadow I used to be
before someone tried to till me into something smaller.
He does not shame the way I sing.
He listens,
as if the chirp of my need
is just the language of finches,
not a flaw to be corrected,
but a song to be answered.
Each day with him,
I am reminded—
I was never weeds.
Only wild.
And he,
with gentle hands and patient eyes,
is the one who saw the garden
still alive beneath the ash.