The glass vase on the table
remembers when it was sand—
remembers its molecules
of silicon dioxide, remembers
what it was like to be singular grains
transported by wind. It remembers
the heat it took to melt,
to lose its crystalline structure.
How intense it is to transform.
It is no small thing to know clarity.
It is no small thing to lose
what we thought we knew of the self,
to submit to a process that changes us
forever. This woman sitting beside
the glass vase on the table
cannot remember when she was dust,
but she remembers those nights
of falling with no one to catch her.
She remembers those days
when she begged the world to open her.
She remembers losing what she thought
she knew and how it was replaced
with the most beautiful nothing—
even now she is changing in ways
she could never predict. Even now
she feels herself melting.