And in my mind I’m still
Crouching among the tiger lilies,
Peering through verdant blades
At the flower-studded landscape
Beyond the borders of home—
I carry whispers from Elsewhere in
The pockets of my lungs;
I hear them when I exhale, when
in the quiet, Responsibility remembers
who I was before she met me—no one—
and in her remembering, forgets
and releases the leash on my temples and tongue.
Then my braid falls limp
along the bumps of my spine as
I shift weight to the balls of my feet
and press my fingers into the dirt,
curved back rising behind the lilies’ leaves
like the sun behind Elsewhere’s cliffs.
And in a rush of wind and whispers
I emerge, a gazelle charging
toward the horizon, the amber glow,
the next runestone, where riddles
open at the pace of my bare feet
pounding against the earth’s soft skin.
In my mind I am there
and there is all there is.
When I blink, I’m dressed in marbled
green, scratching letters of success
across a clouded canvas, white dust
falling from my forefinger and thumb.
My pupils’ eyes dim as they mimic
my marks on their own grey tablets.
I inhale Responsibility’s breath as she
chants her deep blue mantra toward
the void in our eyes—“practicality,
convention,” she says. And the pupils
nod, dressed in the same marbled green.
But in the quiet she forgets me again,
when the whispers churn and stir and
ride on the rims of my outward breath,
so that in my mind I’m still
crouching among the tiger lilies
and beckoning the children to follow.