"Something small and hopeful..."

there is something
that
waits for the light...
it sings a song
of morning,  and
of dawnings,
and of the
break of day.

there is something
that
sits
tucked behind
the
stony silence
of heartbreak and
fear

it holds
itself in check
and refusing the proffered
sweetness of
a kind
word

there is something small
and hopeful
that shivers in the
cold

it sits
just beyond the
reach of
light
and warnth
and the tender sound of
a mother's song

there is something
and it waits
in me,
for you to take just
one more
step


"I am here,"
I whisper
when you come almost
close enough to find me,
but
I don't know how to
unfurl myself
from this coiled
tightness

it has been my
womb-self where
I have thought that
I was
safe
from
rejection
dismissal
abandonment...

but it isn't
what it
promises to be

the only place I will
be
safe is in the
open 
light of day
where
you
demand
something more of
me than
self-preservation
and
this fragile
confidence
will
ever
let me be

The safest
place for
me is where I stand
with arms flung
wide to embrace
all that
I can't control.

To stand in an open field
and let the rain
wash through my fears,

to let the wind blow
away the chaff of the
ego-self
that would hide me
from the best
of who I
might be

what 
the
fear of
rejection...

hiding
behind
a rock
waiting to
ambush me at
the next
turn...

would keep me
from
discovering.

I will not
let it win. 

I will not 
be that
small something
that sits
curled into
itself

I will let the warmth of
an inner
sun
radiate
beyond the
edges of
who
I thought I couldn't be

and I will
bask
in the
gift of
who
it
reveals me
to be...

all that
I AM.