Becoming
A bicycle leaning against the tree trunk
an accidental parking,
or a casual resting place.
The stillness felt rehearsed.
Beyond the window curtain, an outline of her face,
where longing stirs, soft as a forgotten verse.
As though the tree had adorned a bow
many times, before.
Like the girl who is praised
for stillness, for neatness,
for knowing her place.
She paused,
drawn by the quiet geometry.
She gazed,
half-shadow, half-memory.
Watching the tree like a mirror
that remembered more than she could.
Something always pulling her back
the wet towel, the milk cup spill,
the pee puddle and the unpaid bill.
She turned,
wiped something, answered something.
With each swipe, her thoughts compressed
into smaller, quieter shapes.
The bicycle still leaned
like the bow still held.
The tree still stood,
but the sky wore a different hush.
And when the page was turned,
and the night had folded its petals,
a silence lingered.
Cereus blooms at night
she read.
Once a year,
without spectacle.
Not for the eye,
but for itself.
She thought of all the girls
taught to be beautiful
like that bow
tied so tight,
meant to decorate
what they would never own.
And of the women
trying to ride forward
with two wheels spinning,
her own dreams balanced
somewhere between them,
fragile as the tree’s newest leaf.
But the tree was never meant to wear a bow.
It was meant to grow,
And grow wild.
So she rises.
Unties the bow.
Then she rode,
down the quiet lane.
As the clouds scatter,
The hush is becoming clearer.
What will be done is ethereal,
but with quite a different spirit of the feral.
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