Spring Up

 I feel the loving warmth of spring emptying from the cold war all around me.

With every day of isolation the world lost color but gained detail.

Peoples began to look as if they didn't overlap, fences so tall and walls so narrow they blotted out the sky.

Every time someone found out I wasn't like them their wall got taller.

Until one day I realized I could hold my breath and dig down and make a tunnel out into the unknown beyond walls.

From there I looked back and realized there were no walls.

Humans fabricated fictional fortresses in their minds made of reflective ice.

Very few seemed to realize the walls would melt if they touched the ground.

So I walked alone, until I realized there was no alone unless I feared sight.

For once I saw myself and sat formed of flesh.

I take in all of time through my nose and out through my mouth.

My cells warmly embrace their forever friends.

I realized I was in fact a mirror and a projector.

The world around me penetrated my thin skin.

I felt all of the joy and the pain and the love and the suffering.

I melted out into the universe just as the star reflected that light back.

With each crunch of leaves below my feet I released a chirp of a bird, the thunder of a running bear, the whisper of the wind, the typewriting hum of rain and the rainbow emanating from in my eyes.

Once I allowed all of this in I fertilized the soil with the dust I shook from my heart and watered the wildflowers with the memories I poured from my eyes.

Today I feel the flowers rising beneath my feet, caressing my soul and smiling "what's next" at me. I see the human walls lowering and one by one I hold their hands and ask if they're ready to see yet. And we walk together again for the first time.