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These hard seasons behind me,
they have slipped away — scraping their nails down my back.
They have pierced and bruised my skin,
like painful reminders of the low places I have been and the things I lack.
In the midst of their coldest, darkest times,
they pulled up chairs at my table to wine and dine,
and sunk their teeth in to feast on me and my body of dreams
mango ripe — flesh soft and sweet,
salivating right down to my stone hard — bare bones, they hollowed out and licked clean until I was almost, almost empty and down on my knees —
just vulnerable enough to abandon the idea of reciprocity
and consider accepting the crumbs,
fruit husks and bone dust served back to me.
These seasons now upon me, promise everything and nothing.
As my hungry belly rumbles on knowing there will be lonely days,
I pick up my restless bones
and run towards the storm screaming into the wild wind —
drinking in the pouring whisky rain.
What else is there to say?
I fill my lungs with the scents of Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn sprinkled through the air — and exhale.
I ask the Universe for the privilege
to go around the Sun at least once more again
and then another and another one hundred times again.
I dare to believe that this time — we the people, will get to taste true freedom laced with only a pinch of growing pains,
that in between these seasons,
I will sit and heal in the salt water of the Ocean as the sunlight…
