I Don't Need to be Found

I'm not looking to be rescued. 

I've dug too many graves with my own hands

for friendships that withered,

for versions of myself

I outgrew like torn skin.

There's no map in my pocket,

just the memory of dirt roads

my grandfather walked

when the land still knew his name

and didn't ask him to spell it.

Some days I wake up

with frost on my teeth,

jaw clenched around the words

I should have screamed years ago.

But I speak them now...

slow.. cracked..

like the riverbed in drought.

I don't pretend anymore.

Not to be healed.

Not to be sweet.

Not to be manageable.

I know what I have done.

I carry it.

I don't scrub my mistakes clean,

I let them scab,

then I rub my thumb over the raised skin

just to remember the lesson.

I am not soft

but I am kind...

the kind of kind that knows

when to shut the door

before someone calls it open.

People don't see what it takes

to keep walking

when the trail disappears,

when the breath feels borrowed,

when the ribs lock down on their own shame.

I walk anyway.

I have not need to be light.

I want to be real.

Unfiltered like the air

before a southern thunderstorm, 

heavy with copper and something coming.

The only compass I trust

is the shift in my own chest..

the ache when I stay too long,

the lift when I finally leave.

Don't ask me what I'm chasing.

I'm not chasing anything.

I'm becoming.

And if all I become

is a woman made of thistle and gravel,

so be it.

At least I didn't stay small

just to be easier to hold.