#15

Tread beneath the waves
to where the images
cut closest
to the bone.
Get caught
in shame's teeth.

Now breath
big
for everyone
and let yourself move to see
what is really here.

Space
only space
quiet and black and open
timeless and windless
freedom.
Though it seems impossible to face,
Truly,  nothing here can harm you.

Now return.
Changed. Your cells
knowing the true story.

Replace the wind-weathered map in your heart
with the gold ring won.
Let the pages of those carefully kept volumes
fall away into
the day's slack tide;
The leather binding left on the shore for the gulls and stones.
You are done with that story.

-Llora H. Kressmann