her working title

too bright the light,
too hot the sun,
and the wind too harsh,
and yet i crave to visit the desert

my back and legs are weak,
i cannot climb, and yet
the mountains call to me

i love the moon
in every phase and face,
and the stars i love,
yet rarely do i wake
and walk out to see them

i am old and young together,
i am wise and foolish both
i know my heart and head,
my motives and my fears,
but not how i came to be
so contradictory

unless all women are so,
un-simple, perversely whole,
defiantly humble
and entreatingly arrogant,
multiplicious,
conciliatory and unrepentant

though i think not.
i have met few as free as i feel,
if many freer in fact
am i gently fierce
or fiercely gentle?

inside my chest
beats a kernel of truth
fed and steadied
by a nameless flame
a fox-fire flicker
that can rise
in a consuming flash

and you,
who hold at times my body,
do you think you know me?

in all my tides and flames,
my pomegranate womb
and fire-seeded heart,
my ever-tender hands,
skinless shivering soul,
unwearying curiosity,
eyes china blue, sea blue,
my rapunzel hair,
appetites and aversions,
aching bones,
precise speech, long silences,
thread bridges thrown
across chasms of breakage,
do you know what you hold?

how could you know
more than i know of me?
we fear the fire,
and that will have to be enough.