She wanted to know what it was like to be loved.

She had seen its shimmer reflected

on the dewy youth of her skin,

she had seen it glimmer in her lover’s eyes,

but only fleetingly,

in the fabric of the dark.

 

Then the tempest would come.

Their love became scattered, 

like fragments from a shattered mirror.

She almost drowned in the rain that followed,

as it dripped through her cracks,

tapping on the window of her heart,

drop by drop,

putting out the dying embers of the fire,

crackling deep within her soul.

 

Until one day,

at the height of the storm,

when the rain laced her ribboned silhouette,

she walked and walked,

until she found herself in the heart of the forest,

at the foot of an old oak tree.

 

She pressed her naked hand to its buried roots,

cupping the soil in her papery skin,

where a flame began to flicker in her soul once more.

 

And for the first time,

dappled sunlight blazed brazen.

Blossoming from her hands was a new love,

a flower from the bouquet of her soul,

rooted deep within the blue of her veins.