144.

I am all blooming palms now, opening under sun warmth
and ready to curl green tendrils around something
sweet like hummingbird feed, like sugar water
ready to plant green roots a long, long way down
to have something to hang on to when the wind blows
and to push green chutes up through fresh-tilled earth
and get it all under my fingernails, to shake my hair and laugh
while the hot dirt falls from it like fairy dust

I have kept myself indoors and potted for too long
only stretching so far upward, only toward a ceiling, no sky.
but I am learning to lift my leafy skirts and step out
toward the light, past the backyard, through the fence

and I am a wildflower now.

no more gates, no barbed wire
only the hush of tall grasses whispering to each other
and the their sway, and far horizons blending into gray from green
and the soft embrace of soil on my feet
and sunlight drawing freckles on my cheeks.