in my sixteenth autumn, Nature called me to her,
burned into my cells the yearning to meet my depths
and i tasted myself wildly in her fold
until wisteria tangled my feet
and life pulled me from myself by my hair
and i lost the thread, the web, the call.
𝒊 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍
i told the river as it broke through my skin
i forgot the lessons, i forgot the actual call.
i could only hear an echo of it and i followed fragments of memory. it seemed like the call. it felt like the call. it wasn’t. i was just a girl.
your terence said, if you are to follow,
only follow Nature.
it is funny, how sixteen autumns of cracking fire could understand
what twenty springs of dimmed flame did not.
twenty four summers rekindle the fire with rage, bare skin and an open chest,
and with my girlhood as the blood offering.
watch me
answering your call again
with my hair burnt and my thighs bled.
like the dragon woman who ate horseflesh in the red sea,
i sink my teeth into my girlhood and consume it rapaciously in the forest.
mad eyes, i pledge:
this time, it will just be me,
and you, and the wildness.
amaryllis 