I Am Not the Only Branch

There are days I forget what stillness feels like.

When the ache beneath my ribs hums louder than wind,

and the bones in my feet beg to press again

against unpaved earth,

against the roots that once reminded me who I am

before I bent myself into someone else’s pauses.

I was not made for this kind of drift.

I was born of stone circles and woven grass,

from people who knew how to speak with their eyes

and let silence be a ceremony,

not a punishment.

But this silence…

this one has teeth.

And I am tired of wondering

if I am welcome in a bond I did not summon,

but one that entered my life like a storm that never apologized—

only lingered,

only asked me to wait

and carry

and trust

without being given more than a glance every few moons.

You—

the force that carved your voice into the back of my thoughts—

do you not hear the hollow your absence leaves?

I do not beg for devotion.

I do not seek to be a shadow clinging to light.

But I do need truth.

Words.

Action.

Or at the very least—

consistency,

like the river that always returns to its bed

even after the drought.

You rattled something inside of me.

Not with promises.

Not with romance.

But with impression—

a footprint I didn’t expect to step into,

a presence that felt like cedar bark under sun-warmed fingers:

rough, real, unforgettable.

And now I wander through weeks of waiting

for your echo to return.

Not because I am fragile.

But because I am made of memory,

and memory has teeth too

when it starves.

If you—this presence, this force—

wish me in your life,

truly, wholly, not just when the winds are still—

then come more than once in a waning moon.

Come when the trees are shedding.

Come when the sky is empty.

Come when the fire is low

and I no longer know if you remember the warmth we made from it.

I am not the clingy one.

I am the one who listens,

who holds space until my arms go numb,

who waits until waiting begins to rewrite my name.

But I cannot be the only branch

clogging the river

and still be expected to make the seeds grow.

There must be effort—

not just reflection.

You pressed something holy into my bones,

and then stepped back

as though your part had been played.

But I am not an audience.

I am a soul that breathes like the sky—

expanding, contracting,

alive in every moment you choose to be absent.

So I go back now to the wild.

Back to barefoot prayers in red dust.

Back to the taste of river stone and rain-soaked sage.

Back to the sound of pine needles

teaching me how to be present for myself

when others cannot.

I go back,

not because I want to forget—

but because I need to remember

who I was

before your silence taught me how to ache

in languages I never asked to learn.

If I am needed,

let it be known with hands, with presence,

with time that speaks louder than absence.

If I am not,

then let the wind carry your trace from my skin

and I will return, as I always have,

to the cedar wind,

to the knowing of my people,

and to the roots that do not ask me to disappear

in order to stay loved.