Seeds

Thumbnail image lovingly appropriated from Tom Gonzales’ illustration for From the Heart of Africa: a book of wisdom collected by Eric Walters

I’m not fully warmed up, and yet I’m too blown out.

This is where I wanted to start out, then I got off track, as I so often do, when I’m off somewhere essentially looking for you.

Now I’m not even sure what this is, it doesn’t matter, it never has. I hear that rasp in my voice, it doesn’t matter, I’m rough as grass full of seed. I’m going to seed, there’s light swollen in me. I’m carried on the wind, separated from the stem, I’m gone to seed.

And your great lungs are blowing me across the valley. Your great lungs are blowing me across the valley. I feel your eyes are on me again, I feel your warmth around me again.

I don’t give a fuck what else could happen now. I am reckless and wild and I don’t care about it. Split me open, split me open, as long as I expand as you, as long as I expand as you.

I know I’ve visited this place before. It doesn’t matter at all.

I feel my voice is dry and broken. The seeds unraveling inside it. If I am something, well so be it. And if I’m not anything then better.

If you break me apart and blow on me and blow me across the valley, I have gone to seed. I am torn apart but expanded at the heart. And these pieces of me have a warmth glowing at the center. These words don’t even work anymore, but I don’t care.

You’re wriggling through the grass in me, blowing wind in my valley. Blowing me across myself, and up into some place I land, some place I land and will grow. Some place I’m seeded and will grow. Some place I land, some place I’m seeded and grow.

Break up the braid of me, break up my heart seed by seed, til every strand of me is blown as a separate seed. Scatter them throughout the world and see where they grow, and then parts of me grow over. They grew, they grew into shoots and sprouts, all carrying the imprint of me. All lonely incomplete pieces.

Now the time comes, something awakens in each piece. The time comes, something moves in each piece, and they are moved to know they are lost and not whole. Each piece has grown its own strand of life, but knows it’s not whole, wants to rebraid with all parts of me.

Coming back, coming back, coming back to me, coming back as me.

I’m tired of pushing and trying to force something to happen. I’m tired of glossing over the pain of it. I’m tired of pretending I have something to hold onto, there’s nothing left to hold onto, it was already broken. it’s been broken, let’s admit that it’s just broken.

I was broken, I’m still broken, and broken up. And now as we feel each piece, each seed, each sprout, it’s coming back to itself.

We will regrow into one completed strand at the end of this. Until then let’s not pretend that we’re not broken up. Til then let’s not pretend that we’re not broken up inside!

It gets something out of me to admit the rips in the seam. All the missing parts of me that have gone missing it seems. The missing rivulets that need to rejoin the stream.

I’m tired of pretending it’s fine to be divided. It’s not fine. Sometimes I’ve got to feel how much this world is, how much it is.