It’s Okay to Wonder

It’s okay to wonder—
to sit, to ponder, and to wander
until the room forgets your name.

I have carried unrest
like heat beneath the ribs,
a small weather no one sees
until I speak
and the thunder comes out gently.

My soul learned flight
inside molten distress.
Even now, something in me
beats its wings
against the walls
of what I almost forgive,

for

Amends depends
on which way the wind turns.

West or east,
in me and in him,
the same bird beckons—
his silence in my mouth,
my anger in his hands,
both of us pretending
we did not inherit
the same cage.

A well-nurtured seed
can still tremble
beneath snow-filled peaks.
It can be fed everything
and still not know
how to bloom
without breaking.

Beneath my skin,
my flesh repeats
phrases I cannot translate;

though

in either Sanskrit or Latin,
scripture or chicken-scratch,
in prayer or punishment—
it all looks the same
when the body remembers
before the mind agrees.

The words I speak
were me before meaning.
They simmered first
in the stomach,
rose through the chest,
burned at the tongue,
and waited there
like a match
begging for air.

These emotions
did not ask permission.
They climbed out of me
as hungry and winged;
as half-language and half-flame.

All I want
is another lung—
not to survive,
but to breathe in
what I have grown
without mistaking
the harvest
for the wound.