metamorphose

She is already leaving her own skin,

when his hand brushes hers in vain;

her pulse loosens, letting bark begin,

and sap learns the language once held by vein.

*

The moment holds like amber light,

her ribs rise once with human breath;

then wood gathers close, pulling her from sight,

the forest reclaiming her from death.

*

Her fingers tremble toward the sky,

loosening into leaves of green;

a new grammar humming as they fly,

a syntax older than she’d been.

*

He calls her name—sound fades to shade;

for names are nothing once light replies.

Roots spread through ankles unafraid,

seeking the deep where memory lies.

*

Her spine lengthens in a tender flight,

unmaking the form he tried to seize;

each heartbeat fleeing marble’s bite,

each gesture stalled in sculpted breeze.

*

His grief is carved in desperate chase,

her freedom carved in turning free;

between them lives the threshold space—

the cry of a body choosing what to be.

*

She is not running—she returns

to the quiet soil that bore her true;

her leaves outsing the crown he yearns,

breathing a story he never knew.

*

And beneath the marble’s frozen sway,

beneath the shine no chisel can betray,

the earth instructs her day by day

in how to root, and how to stay.

**