the love story of the tree
So much like the bending bare branches
of the tree, early January,
it’s hard to hide much
in winter.
In secret, someone writes my name
in black ink, over and over again,
and runs it beneath water.
I am born, and fade. It goes on like this.
This liturgy of the hours.
I left my journal in someone else’s bed
with drawings of trees, quotes I wanted
to remember come New Year’s.
It’s not in how much I have loved
but more in the way I am loved.
I wake every morning.
I shiver and shake
like a sapling tree
in love with the wind.
I have nothing to protect me against
the way in which he moves me.
I can’t control the way the earth
moves through season,
the way the sap diminishes me,
makes me witness, the way I can
love like this, the way I cannot touch
him, the way he touches me,
except the flowering
inside me
come spring.