I dreamed that we went back.
It was overgrown and wild with our absence.
I thought it would ache,
but I lost the rumination in the grasses—
thick and tall and past containment.
They waved to me in the wind
and I nodded my greeting in return.
I thought they would have forgotten me.
I thought I had forgotten.
The path our feet took when we were young,
now overgrown and chirping.
This all had been written once
in overly familiar pages
that haunted my dreams,
humming a quiet incantation.
In the beginning…
I had forgotten sky could be so blue.
A wild republic stood
where a small garden had been planted.
My eyes never stopped seeing
mountains and grasshoppers and budding vines.
Waters teemed with fish,
and I danced with them as I waded.
Swollen ankles and calloused feet are welcomed home.
Sun spotted hands skimming the earth from which I came.
In the beginning
Further in we went and further up we climbed,
guided by the most delicious breeze,
joined by those we long ago named
in a sisterhood of plant and sky and sea.
The tree still stood where we had first forgotten.
Commemorating that long ago girl who ate the fruit and lost.
She left this place.
And she was alone to wander through a thousand lives lived and a thousand lost.
She choked and laughed and screamed and prayed.
In the beginning.
A million mothers join her here with sagging breasts
and bellies stretched from the generations carried—
waters broken and blood given.
Life came and held by her throughout history,
now brought home.
