I do not love it, the tension
between us, dark-viscous and thick,
or red-spined and prickly. I don’t
love the way a fat fist forms
in the softness of my belly,
then fossilizes into righteousness,
or unravels into something fetid
and festering. I don’t like when words
feel like sandpaper on my skin,
or worse, when silence feels
like a moat, like a wall, like a sword.
I don’t like feeling like a tree in November
with not a single leaf, barren, stark.
But maybe I love the way meeting tension
eventually teaches me to loosen
my certainty until I am less cement,
more soil. Maybe I love how it
acts like a neon sign that blares
inside me with scarlet all caps:
WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.
Maybe I love the way wrestling with tension
invites me to ask more questions of myself,
of the world. This gift I don’t want to unwrap.
How alive I am then as the fierceness of it
fades, leaving me opened in ways
I didn’t know to explore, and feeling
again into how deep they are, these roots.