My Pale Spirit Braids the Earth

My skin—

it tells one story.

Fair, freckled, soft as old parchment,

written in the language of settlers

and mountain winters.

But if you listen closer—

to the way I touch plants,

the way I cook, the way I pray—

you’ll hear another tongue.

One older than English,

older than boundaries,

older than shame.

“The plants are our relatives,”

the elders say.

“They are our first teachers.”

And mine?

Were strawberries.

 Tiny, red-hearted offerings

that taught me love is meant to be given,

not hoarded.

That the sweetest things

come low to the ground,

humble, asking to be picked

with gentle hands.

The first fruit, they say,

was given by the Creator

to teach compassion after anger.

And I have eaten many berries

when I needed that lesson

more than anything.

I carry strawberries in my memory,

like songs passed down

without a voice.

They are my apology,

my tenderness,

my offering back

to the land that raised me quietly.

And then there is sage—

not the kind bought in polished bundles

for display,

but the wild kind,

soft-leafed and silver-sighed,

growing where prayers echo.

I learned to crush it between fingers

not for ritual,

but for remembering.

Its scent is the one I reach for

when the world forgets me.

It doesn’t ask questions.

It just stays,

like a grandmother who knows

grief must be sat with, not solved.

Sage smells like protection.

Like “don’t worry, child,

the wind still knows your name.”

Jasmine—ah, jasmine.

That moon-blossomed grace.

She reminds me

that sweetness is strength,

that I am allowed to bloom at night,

that fragrance is a kind of language too.

And when I blend her with vanilla,

it’s not perfume—

it’s legacy.

Vanilla, like story,

unfolds slowly.

Warm, brown, rich.

Not loud, but unforgettable.

The way my voice trembles

when I speak of my grandfather’s teachings,

how his silence said more

than a thousand white pages ever could.

And then there is dirt.

Not just soil—

but dirt

that gets under your nails

when you’re planting something sacred.

Dirt that smells like memory

when rain touches it.

It’s not clean.

But it’s real.

I’d rather have dirt-stained palms

than polished ones

that never held a root.

Rain is my lullaby.

She tells me stories

in the rhythm of cedar branches,

in the soft thud of drops

on canvas or skin.

She baptizes my doubts.

She knows the songs I hum

when I’m too tired to believe

that I am enough.

“We are all visitors to this time, this place,”

says a wisdom-keeper.

“Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then to return home.”

My home is in the braiding.

Braiding my hair,

my bread,

my grief.

Each strand says:

“I was here. I remember.”

Like basket weaving,

where each pull of reed or pine

is a stitch in the soul.

I don’t make for beauty.

I make to belong.

Clay remembers my hands.

Pottery doesn’t lie.

It tells of warmth, hunger, ceremony—

all the places I’ve prayed in silence

while shaping something useful

out of what others threw away.

Cooking is my hearth language.

It’s how I say

“I see you. I welcome you.”

My stew is memory.

My spices are protection.

And my kitchen is the place

where I reclaim all the names

my ancestors couldn’t say out loud.

So yes—

my skin is pale.

My hair doesn’t always lie flat

in the patterns of those

whose blood braids with mine.

But inside,

I am river and fire,

bitterroot and honey,

story and silence.

I walk between the lines,

and yet firmly on the path.

Even if I hold no tribal card,

even if no official map claims me,

the earth does.

And she has never needed proof

of my belonging.

She has only ever asked:

Do you remember how to love me?

Do you still know how to listen?

And I do.