No Blueprints

 I was not born smooth.

I came through the ribs of iron

pressed between bone and thunder,

where even flowers had to bloom

with teeth.

Softness was not given,

it was quarried

pulled from the same cliff

that once held silence

like a buried vein of gold that 

no one dared to touch.

There were no blueprints,

only pulse and ash.

Only the slow grind of years

teaching breath to bend

without breaking.

I did not become patient.

I was made patient

by flame that wouldn’t flicker out,

by wind that did not cool

but carved itself.

By the way roots must press downward

before the first green dares to break the  sky.

I have stood in the fire

without turning to ash.

I have swallowed rivers

that tried to drown me in memory.

I have buried loss

in brightened flowerbeds,

turned mourning into moss

and let petals bloom

where no one thought they could.

The earth did not ask me

to hurry.

It asked me to stay,

to grow downward

before I reached for sky.

So I rooted.

Not for anyone’s arrival,

but because the soil loves me

even when no footsteps cross it.

And still..

there is one, 

whose presence

moved something that

I never knew I could move again.

They are forged of harder metals,

the kind that hold heat

but will not show it.

And I..

I am copper,

willing to conduct

what they have buried

too long in frost.

I feel the ache beneath their armor.

I do not break it.

I honor it.

Because healing is not a door

it is a slow melt.

A drip from glacier to stream

until the river remembers

how to carry light again.

If that day comes

when their forge opens,

when the weight of what was

cracks just enough

to let breath pass through..

they may look across the quiet

and see what never left.

I will be there.

Not waiting,

but becoming:

the bee in the thyme,

lichen on stone,

fox at the edge of the field

who knows how not to chase

and still be seen.

I will be the shape

that fits their palm

not because it was molded to match,

but because it was whole

long before

they were ready to hold it.

I am not lesser

for being soft.

Softness is what fire becomes

when it chooses to warm

instead of burn.

I do not ask to be chosen.

I ask only

that when the heart is ready,

it tells the truth

about who stood still

without vanishing.

I am the quiet

that waited without question.

The mineral,

the flower,

the flame,

the tree..

that was always more

than they thought

they deserved.

And still,

I remain

whole.