Hatchet

“To the earth”, she said.

“I must ground you there!”

As he looked at her with wild dead eyes

half crazed from the wanting

To run from himself.

The years of being fine

Had all but run out

Holes in the vessel of his heart

Leaking out himself until he was hollow.

Among the canopy of the sky

Dappled chartreuse leaves drew in light

Anointing his brow,

Revealing his scarred lips,

Cindering his heart alive once more.

And with sweet grass threads

She bound him there,

Tunnelling thread through earthen floor,

Then over his feet, worming fasts

To tether him upright aligned with his soul.

He wanted to bend and flop

To succumb to the mud

and lay himself lifeless in the soft moss

For the real work seemed too much,

And the allurement of allowing his body

To compost as he lay dying

Seemed easier somehow.

But, in her love-stricken state

She seeded a great cedar behind him

Reminding him how he could both lean

And stand of his own accord.

And though, she wanted only to love him there,

And build a mud cave to house their souls in one clutch,

She knew he had to become all of himself

Before any offering would be his own.

So, with gentle backward feet, she retreated,

Into the rich thicket of her own lush heart,

Loving him only now

In glimpses through vines

Content in her sanctuary

Ears perked, with no anticipation,

For the sound of a hatchet

Breaking sticks

That someday

May or may not

Come.

-Artemis Mandala