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of hefty knowings, and of patience.

 


the woman who raised me is not much longer of earth.  

i know that her physical body is passing away, without medical diagnosis, or familial confirmation.  

the stories and patterns she and i share are my first informants.  



a dear friend brings me a message from his dreamspace, where he saw my little mother swaying in a white embroidered dress by the warm seas of hawai'i.  

he admits that he knew her by her feral loveliness, and i smile lopsidedly.  

he tells me of the word she gave him.  

patience.



a wild rose bursts into bloom for the first time in years, after months of drinking up percolated coffee grounds, and water bowls of my own menstrual blood.  

as i stare at the shock of magenta petals, a coastal wind whispers the words extinction burst to anyone listening.  

fighting the grief in my throat, i whisper back blessings of peace and the unavoidable let-go.



to create a medicine wheel in my wee garden, i scour the ocean edge for teal, yellow, grey, blood red, turquoise, honey-blue, white quartz, and fossilized rocks.  

on the final trip of lugging the rocks back to my vehicle, weight tears open the cross-body foraging bag i bought with her while we were in kauai.  

hours of scraping open a circle, dance stomping the earth flat, and carefully adding stones creates beautiful directions.  

when she flies to her ancestors, the rock compass will guide her homeward.  

i set my hands to the foraging bag, mending broken seams, and restitching fresh patterns over the old.



the woman who raised me is the woman i am now, and ain't that something? 

we kept silence between us for the past four years...a mutual amalgam of stubbornness and saving face.  

there is no good-bye in our love.

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