in her words

I am paradox embodied,
formed out of the most beautiful nothing.

My body is made of sap and songs, red earth, musk, and morning light. 
My mind is a flaming windflower. My soul: the sky.

I have seen clouds in the sea.

Tossed on the potter’s wheel, I am supple and shriveled, resistant, surrendered,
forever destroyed and re-made. 
I know blossoms born of burning, and I also know rain.

I am the dawn, dreaming and determined,
a young girl and quiet crone. 
I am melting snow—ruby-eyed and terrified—awed by my own mystery,
and yours.

I am the story of a slow burning star.
My yearning is rebellion, my pleasure unmoored.

I am the wound and the medicine, protestor and protested—bound and ever-free. 
Beneath the painted masks of personality, I am consort of eternity.

Loved and rejected, respected, subjected, praised, and put down—
when all of this fades, I am what remains.

Who writes these words?
Who thinks these thoughts?

Woman of tides and bones, her full potential still unknown.

Ripening, I am.