so these are my twenties
Tornado Prayer I’m all valley here, she called. Come on and smooth me. Lift the rocks that I cannot and put them where you will. Where they are I’m not content. I’m groaning underneath them. I won’t worry on the crushing. I’ve been crushed along my way. My lungs have learned to re-inflate. They wrinkle back to near-right shape like crumpled paper palmed against a desk. Don’t worry that you’ll hurt me. Come and clean the fear from me. I know that you can make me feel the things worth feeling more than that. In the presence of your wrecking winds my mind will not spin. It will lift, straight, slow and narrow. Minds can do that in the midst of terror great enough; they overcome it. I will think not in circles but a cool silk line, threading out like ink in the lines of drawn-on-skin. I saw today my skin is made of tiny plates all shaped like triangles. I scraped myself that’s how I saw. I will see much more when you come round. I’m going to live. I have a love who takes my breath and makes it like a line of string that frays midair, though I don’t think that’s what love is that’s not a thing that I take lightly. Or mean to leave behind abruptly. Understand me. I’m your valley. Hum along my lines and make my landscape new. Snap my dying trees and churn my soil. You know what I need and where. Show the living bits of me how much I live to live. I live to live. I do. Smoothed.
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