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Rest

Clark Reflection Series Prompt:

Through your writing, take me to a place where you find rest.

Response:

The smell of earth surrounds me.
Forearm deep in store bought soil because this life I live has me three floors off the ground.

I so easily twist my hands, squeezing tight to this dirt only to lift up and watch it so beautifully fall out of my grasp.

I could care less about the mess coating my pants or the dirt finding home behind these fingernails that I probably shouldn’t have painted in the first place.

I have to fight you to take you out of your home.
My most delicate battle to date,
being careful not to tear the very roots that you shot out, clinging to this earth that you owned.

Little by little, I remove the dirt you inhabited.
Ridding you of the wasteland that left you stagnant
and grounding you in a space of
new, fresh earth.

Embracing change, you drive your roots deeper
even though chances are I am going to do this same damn thing again to you soon.

For once, what I love and nurture and care for
doesn’t run away.
It blooms.


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