And for so long I wasn’t anything. A pile of rocks to the side of the trail, might be a tiny grave or some kid’s collection. Circles in the mushrooms at the edge of the woods. Heartbeats through clothes. I was no one except grief. I haunted hilltops and ushered my tears in with the rain. I was so beautiful, but I was nothing–if you looked inside me, it was dead air. You’d fall in, too. You’d disappear.
I looked up at you like from the bottom of a well. And I was reckless for it. I turned thunderstorms inside out, hand over fist. I raced the sun across the sky. I pulled at the oceans until they made tidal waves, and I let them break over me, over and over again. I was there beneath them–I was one with the reef. The wind howled and I sang with it, the wolves and the birds and the trees. I ate everything raw. I was alive. I hadn’t felt that way before. I haven’t felt that way since.