Tender Mirror

Perhaps it is ok for me to be what I am,
mixed up and striving,
settled into root and soul, unfurling,
sometimes frenzied,
always profuse.
I have so often been given to understand there is something
slightly obscene in it, the way I move
and speak and sink back into silence
to my own strange rhythms,
never quite in step with how others count the time, hearing the extra beats
in the moments between.
These things in me which remain seeded
and silenced,
that rot and writhe, fecund and fulsome;
this is the soil sustaining, charred
tasting of salt and sorrow and honeyed joy
tasting truth in the moments speaking
soft and savored, enfolding.
Perhaps it is glorious for me to be what I am,
open in offering,
nourished and nourishing,
weaving self into life into story,
inhabiting finally my own singular seasons,
every breath its own devotion
to hunger and hospitality, to love’s lineage
in You.