Wild

Laying here, curled up in the grass next to the river, listening to the wind rattle the long-dead prairie grass, I realize that I am madly in love with the sky. That’s why I feel breathless on those winter days with thick blankets of low-slung clouds. I am longing for my love’s sweet blue face. The warmth of her yellow smile, even in the winter’s cold. I can feel it now, as I gently doze, stroking my face like the hand of a sweetheart. Although there is ice on the river I am not cold. I lay still, pressing my heart against the earth like a lover after sex, feeling snugly secure of my place between the earth and sky.

It has been too long. I always let myself get to the breaking point before I come back here. This is where I am me, but I am used to the cage that I accepted for most of my life. I’ve been getting bolder. Over a year now of slipping out of the cage, climbing over the back fence, roaming farther each time. I still come back though, lock myself in out of comfort, duty, habit. But I know that it is not where I belong.

I am not a true wild thing yet. “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself” (D. H. Lawrence) and that is something I have been quite a lot in the last months. But I am growing wilder. My body is changing with my newfound freedom. I used to be all ample curves, not overfed but soft, domesticated. Now I am angular, bones and muscles and hard edges. I can go for longer between meals. My eyes can see better in the dark. I am no longer stricken by terror in the quiet, longing to fill my every moment with human voices to dull the fear.

And there is quite a lot of fear. Stuck halfway between, I fear both the unknown and the cage. I am more elusive than I once was. I do not trust myself yet but neither do I trust anyone else. It is exhausting, which is why I return so often to the safety and consistency of the cage, but that no longer feels like home. I run myself ragged, flailing and clawing wildly, feeling lost and alone and running in circles, trying to decide who I am. Eventually I always find myself here. Safely tucked between the earth and the sky, breathing into the slumbering grass, my face caressed by the last rays of sunlight. This is who I am. Remember. You already are everything you want to be.