The Lone Tree

my own blood

my beloved

my heart beats loud in my chest,

i know it is because my heart,

it is not so good,

too soft, too big, too fragile

I find beauty in these things

the solemn melancholy

the smallness of me

against the bigness of the world

i revel in each of my broken branches

the storms that have passed over me

leaving me in pieces

i curl in upon myself

a moth not yet emerged

from its brown leaf cocoon

i do not want to leave this place

it is safe here.

i am a stone foundation

still holding back the earth

while a tree grows inside me.

i once dreamed that my hearth fires burned bright

that my tending kept it strong.

now i cannot find the matches

and the wet wood will not burn

these cold fingers are a revelation

i weep against the morning sun

leave me to my darkness

leave me to my cold bed

leave me to wonder if spring will ever come

i wrap myself in furs

and step naked into the snow

my breath like a dragon

it wraps around my ankles like a Scottish mist

the wind takes my hair

and i toss my head like a wild horse

only there is my shadow,

and i sidestep afraid

i turn to find comfort in affection

and only my own arms wrap around me

i stumble lost in the woods

and fall before her feet

abandoned.

my heart

it is not so good

it is fragile

soft

i stand in this place

and my breath it is like the reaches of space

i cannot find the air to breathe

as i see how beautiful

this whole world is.

and how unbearably

ugly

man

has made it.

.