She is singing about her sweet adversary, and there are bells calling her voice out from some wilderness she grew around the base of her life to keep her safe from everything harmless, anything too comfortable, whatever fed the complacency of warmth and languor and safety.
She grows sleepy by the fire, so she walks out to the fields pulling a thin gray sweater around her curved shoulders while the moon slips behind velvet colored clouds. She frames the moon when it appears again between a screen of alfalfa while she watches from her back. No girls have been afraid to wander after midnight while the house slept safe just to hear the sound of wind rearranging leaves into secret patterns of night and shade.
You could go whole days without saying, not even chewing gum because it was "too fun."
Strawberries: too delicious. Friends: too dangerous. Love: too hopeless.
How you have grown brave, little dear. I was afraid for you, but you let yourself say what made you angry, what made you hurt, and then all love was possible because you weren't afraid to feel.
And if you can't break, what good are you to fix? And it is in the fixing that you learn what love is. Allow yourself to be mended, stood upright and sent out again, a soldier, a song, a sight, a sound, a silent word daring to breathe the white circle, the surprised vowel.
See the wind rearranging leaves into secret patterns of night and shade? Um, yes. Yes and yes and if I were the moon, I'd be in your hand with these words.
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