Dark Night of the Soul

(For J.)

Breathe in, breathe out. 

The words have always been the bones beneath her skin, the ribs around her breath. They give her grace and motion; they let her move in close to love. They make her fingers dexterous as she weaves, her hands tireless as she sows seeds in turned over earth. But when night comes she is kept awake by their throbbing ache. She says she's ill, but others say it's growing pains.

Her soul is like light on a summer day, shifting, changing, shades and shadows chasing each other. She is a forest floor dappled by a lacework of leaves and branches, a place where things grow quietly. Hers is a soul populated by ferns and fiddleheads, a place that smells of loamy earth and carries the prints of quiet creatures that quickly scamper to the treetops or hide behind bushes when an intruder walks in unknowing. By day the air is thick with calm, but dark cannot be staved off. Night is not friendly in this wood, and she is afraid.

Hush.

Sunrise is coming.

There is day after every dark.

Just wait.