Restoration.

I rest against myself, back to spine, enveloped. I had forgotten how it feels like to be home, with patience my harbor; with patience my guardian, with patience the mighty oak spreading like protection across this land and holding it together.

As spring takes tremulous step after step forward in the aftermath of the bone-flaying winter, my thoughts are once again green growing things and, oh, how I have missed this sound.

My lantern-scythe has returned firmly to my hand and how I have missed the way it lit every step before me and cut a light-lined clear and gut-certain path. The word-wounds it carved into me are scabbing and I offer myself apologies like bandages and salves like understanding: I am sorry for the violence I inflicted onto you. I wait now. I am almost whole. I wait to become a spirit of fire again.

I am rooted in the earth. I tune in to this sensory world that I love, this slow and patient world in which I thrive, this humble world in which I always return to, and these are the salves I have to offer:

May my hands always be open and may compassion-empathy fly like doves into the world and return with knowledge and love.

May I grow ever more adept at using my scythe-light; may I understand the times to scythe and cut and carve, and the times to light the dark so I may find the next pebbled step beneath my feet.

May I rekindle the fire within. May I be, a being of flame and earth and air: carefree as a spark, rooted as an oak, soft as air.

May I remember: be patient. you are still growing.