My Honey-Colored Love

She taught me to dance with my feet Soles laid bare on forest floors dirt floating between the bed of my nails and pink flesh Fine blades of grass cutting their greenery between the layers of skin and bone My toes bled with the waves of river water and drops of mourning dew

She taught me to run How to brush my fingers across the purpled underbellies of tree leaves To place my feet delicately one in front of the other When to stop and press the spines of Devil’s Walking Stick into the pads of my finger Blood beaded and ran down my palm to be used in pacts of love, longevity, and shared identity

We took baths in the sun Laying in the golden rays that peaked between the canopy of foliage that lined her backyard We reclined like felines, tails of secrets and laughter curled around our legs Gossip of browned trees lulled us to sleep The evergreen crickets told us stories of forests long gone

She taught me to sing A song etched under the tongue of all children who have yet to grow old Sung with pearly white baby teeth and bloodied knees:

Oh, we are the woodland maiden’s waterfalls Offspring of the great untold We are fashioned with the song of youthful siren calls Whose blood mixed with honeysuckled flecks of gold Oh, we are daughters of the wilderness Children of river water nymphs We are stuffed with fairy floss and viciousness Whose time is spent chasing fireflies and forest imps Oh, we are kin to treefrogs Babies of ancient starlight sprites We are made with bones of moss and floral fog Whose fingers are laced with moonshine of forest nights Oh, we are children of the wild Who live our lives dancing with the rain and the exiled

We ate with our hands Forks, knives, and cutlery of the cultured and dignified discarded between muted mounds of sand Our parents looked at us and said we were wild children who were never meant to age Descendants of flushed fae and yellow treefrogs Our wings and webbed feet clung to our souls despite switchblades of childhood

So we scraped our way through girlhood Holding hands with pink crabapples and evergreen pine trees Playing in the wildlife until we could no longer stand the sight of the civilized My honey-colored love taught me many a thing But how to grow old was not one