That moment I faced myself—
unvarnished,
tempted to shut my eyes,
to stare at my feet—
that moment startled
like a small blue bird
in the wrong season.
Who have I ever been,
but slightly outside
my own knowing?
And still—
something in it lifts:
not only the record
of my failures,
but what I have survived.
A reckoning,
without mercy,
without disguise.
I reach for blue—
blue crystals, aqua quartz—
something to hold
while I learn
to look.
