I have wanted to be more.
To be the rain in your desert.
To keep my car cleaner.
To grow wings. And every door
I opened, I imagined I could open
it wider. I have wanted to be
not just the sunrise, but a better
sunrise. Not just a woman,
but a better woman. Not just
a song but the whole symphony.
To open the door has not been enough.
I have wanted to take the door off
its hinges, to take down the walls, too.
See what a reaching mind can do?
It will tear down the whole house
just to let in a breeze. I have wanted
to be any flower even slightly
more in bloom than my own petaled want.
To be vast. To be vaster than that.
To be true. “Oh friend,” says Rumi,
from behind the sunrise,
“you are not yet too old,
it is not yet too late for you
to swim in your own sea,
to emerge from the depths
of yourself and refuse to find refuge
outside your own heart.”
I try to impress him, to show him
I’m listening by leaning toward him so hard
I fall down on my ear. “My dear,”
he says, with a tender laugh,
“you look so sweet as you stretch
toward my voice as a sunflower
bends toward the sun.” And I
raise myself up from the floor
to ask him, please, to tell me more,
but already he is gone.