Across the Threshold

Skin-slipped snake-like
Unused as I am to allowing the simple grace of tenderness, of transition.
Struggling against sensitivity,
Callow, gawky without my sharp-edges,
No longer a creature against which the world may break itself,
I am instead broken open.
With a finality like birth, like dying into myself,
Strangely conscious of every
Single
Mote
Glistening diamonds in the web.
Trailing fingers as across the lips of lovers,
Entwining into being,
Into winging flight
As I would hold you, gently, in the palm of myself
Marveling at the electricity of the almost-there that whispers in the air between one step
And another.
I read the skins of seeds, of old women’s faces and babes newborn to laughter.
There is no path now, only the legend of a map,
A barely-there strain my feet seek to embody.
Pause then, here,
Let the way be what it will be without wresting it into a shape more pleasing to those old, familiar stories.
This is a new land, I a traveler somehow unwearied;
Soft-snicking latch behind shows me the way.