Beate Sigriddaughter

I kneel in gravel, no tears, just
fascinated with six tiny purple petals
poking through light snow. I don’t know
their name. I have arrived
here limping through decades of searing
masculine entitlement and much
benevolent contempt. Six tiny petals
like sunbeams, like foxes, like stars,
reminding me—I need no respect, no
love to exist. My splendid body,
like a purple flower, does its miraculous
thing, even as my soul limps on
in disbelief, knowing how
lovely it would have been to dance.

It will — you did look, didn’t you? —
remind you of your dreams. It will
remind you the world owes you nothing
and you owe nothing in return. Life is
a gift, not a duty; it glides like a river
that doesn’t carve canyons for love. No
deference, no duty, no obedience.
It will remind you of your skin and how
it shelters dreams and bones. How beautiful
you are, exuberant when someone
unexpected crosses your path, a lizard,
a hawk, a lover, and you know even God
isn’t God in order to be loved. You can
breathe now. There are waterfalls
you yearn for you will likely never see,
and dances you will likely never dance
again, though they were dazzling and
perhaps still are in someone else’s bones.
But if you get up early in late summer
you may already find winter’s beloved
Orion in the eastern sky. You are enough
to make things happen.

How come
I’m tempted to run
out and buy meat to deliver
to a hungry fox,
yet I don’t want to give
spare change to a man
asking for it
by the Lutheran church?

I live
therefore
I am

good enough.

If it were
a green stone,
I would pick it
up for its beauty.
It was wadded
up chewing gum.

I passed.