Ryska Bajhiri

If you grow a forest in your pain, it will forever lie in rotten leaves. The rain will turn sour as the ashen earth snaps its teeth, and the roots of the tallest trees will shrink from the salt in which they are set. Find your shovel amongst the weeds and dig once more– dig through clay and stone and pain until you are at the seed that started it all– and give it love. Give it kindness. Plant it in soft soil and forgive its false springs and withered stalks; it grows in new earth now. Someday its branches will kiss the clouds and taste sweet summer rain; for now, you do not need a forest. You only need time.    

moss’s maw opens wide– the earth is not a picky eater. it will take you all. consumption, regardless.

Stop running from the storms, my friend. Sweep violent as a hurricane and soft as the summer rain, driving as slanted glass-shard-drops and patient as the dew waiting for dawn. Dance as lightning crackles on your skin and rain beads on your brow. Break lake-banks, eating up land beneath your waves like some gnawing, clawing sea-beast, translucent and wild with liberty. Rage for the storm, weep for the rain, and there will be no sun to keep you tamed.

Tilt back your head and let open your mouth, set free all that creeps inside. Climb, vines, between canine and cranny and curl. Seethe, moss, dripping lace down past your lips– levy, roots, latticed, sprawling, deeper than your feet have the courage to travel. Bare your teeth. force them to bear your truth.

we need famine, we tell ourselves, to learn to love the feast; but when floods come to wet parched tongues, we drown in what we seek.