Supersaturation

I am being taught something
poignant about resistance
and the quiet that comes with
naming this.
The quiet that still crashes
in the distance
so that I can feel its
waves on my upper lip,
so that it shakes my shoulders,
and crawls whispering
into my ear,
quiet.

You are not so empty
anymore.
You are full of names,
the salt and sweet
of the wind, the women,
the weight.
It has been absorbed
into you
and crowds up your
chest,
makes it so you can’t breathe
sometimes
with the awe of it,
the super saturation
of stories
forgotten and future
looming too softly
before you.

I am being taught about
resilience.
About fat toes that gently
sweep sharp sides
from my twisting path,
one that folds in on itself
holding me deep inside,
embraced by its journey
and still vulnerable to
the elements.
I sit in the center,
a small space surrounded
by those sharp sides
narrow in its give, but
here I find fullness,
words pushing past
limitation and singing
into the world a
truth that I don’t
hear until it is
outside me,
until I see the stain
of it and can smell
it on my fingers,
the work of side
stepping forward,
draining
the old
water to find what can be scraped
away.
Learning how to fill myself anew.