Ready

I am not ready for you, life. I would like to put you away for another year. I would not like to turn another year older this time. Make a skin of leaves that stay forever green and mud that never freezes. I will remain here. Inside my world. I will do the same things I did last year, with my usual delight. I will cook the same meals. I will wear my hair the same. Life, I am not ready for you this year. I would like to stay hidden in this.

I have a birthday arriving next week. And it is almost fall. I feel the covers turn to curl around me, calling me into deeper warmth. I have been worshipping the sun for months. It hurts to turn my neck. To learn a new way of warmth. A softness moves into this heat of my body. It’s time to put down roots. It’s time to reclaim who I am, in these legs, in these bones, in this life. And I am not ready. I don’t want to go in. I would like to stay out here this time. With all of you.

I would like to be with what is easy. I would like to talk about what makes sense. I want to use words I’ve known the meanings of, and eat foods I could cook blindfolded. I want to crave what I crave and I want to get it. I am not ready for you, life within me. I don’t want to know you. I’m afraid of the words you know and how your lips form strangely around them. I’m afraid of the dances you might teach me that the world hasn’t seen yet. I’m tired. I’m worried I won’t know who I find in there. I can be sure I won’t know what I find in there.

And I begin to listen in a deeper way. To the softening in my body that is small as a whisper. To the browning edges of leaves. To the yellow and red veins in the leaves that have yet to drop. I hear them mumble words I don’t know yet. And they are beautifully strange. I curl up next to the heat building in my body, and remember it’s been there all summer. I rest and dream of a bear woman who holds planets in her palms. She shows them to me.

I am still not ready. But life knows this and is patient with me. Knowing this leaving comes with grieving what will never be the same. I will be different. These trees will be different. We will never have these flowers again, in just the same way we did. And we had them so sweetly. I have always needed to cry for these things. I have always needed to not be ready for this season. And I have always needed to move in anyhow. The way driftwood slowly makes its way back to shore. Rounded, soft, dried. Its body laid on the beach, ready to burn.

Dear flame of my life, I am not ready for you. Take me anyway.