Journey

The oracle didn't speak.

She just raised one eyebrow

and handed me a cracked mirror

so I would never see myself clearly.

I tucked a silent map

under my tongue

cartographed by things left unsaid.

The path was unclear.

The signs were written in a language

I'd invented at thirteen and immediately forgotten.

I fell in love with a ghost

and argued with the fickle wind

in a labyrinth they'd made of expectations.

They told me I was "almost there";

they meant emotionally codependent.

By the river I tried to barter with my past

The ferryman shrugged

"everyone does," he said.

I crossed anyway to find a barren land

with a single wilting flower

that looked suspiciously like me.

I knelt beside it,

watering her with my tears as

I bloodied my knuckles,

cracked them open from digging out

the roots of shame.

It didn't thank me.

But it stayed,

blooming gently, stubbornly.

And I think that means

I made it.

Participant's Poems