Taking flight: Finding faith in the turning points

My life, lately, seems like nothing but a series of changes.  I'm not talking about little changes.  Or medium-sized changes.  I'm talking about big changes.

Regardless, I am a week and five days into two weeks off...a recovery period.  It's felt like less of a vacation and more of a period of self-study, almost.  I knew I needed this time, but I did not know how deeply I ached for it until it came.  My days are spent re-learning how to breathe, and eat, and sleep, and feel present in my body again.  There's been a lot of walking, and cleaning, and yoga, and reading.  And there's also been some migraines and letting my body sort through the crap.  My body needed this time in ways that I hope never to get to again.  I probably will, honestly, because a lot of what I realized was...I don't know so many things.  I can honestly say, though, that I have learned a lot about what I can handle (it's a lot), what I'm willing to handle (not as much as I was), boundaries (they're clearer than they were), and what I'm willing to put up with (not nearly as much as I did).  

And I also learned that I can and do stand up for myself.  I am routinely brave.  I do very hard things - regularly.  I'm actually kind of a badass.  And I kind of did a shit job of taking care of myself in the process. 

I read this article - titled "The Wisdom of Shattering" - from the "On Being" blog the other morning, and it spoke right into the achy place.  This line, in particular, spoke so exactly to me in metaphorical ways, it's as if Ms. George knows my life.  Speaking of gymnastics, she wrote: "if my body was tense as I released myself between the bars, it was less about being in flight, and more about the weight of these toxic conditions."

And that's just it, isn't it?  The fear, the tension, the anxiety -- it's not so much about being in flight.  It's about letting go of everything that is preventing us from being able to fly.  The fear so often is about the fear of letting go of what is keeping us still and stagnant, and so much less about the actual fear of flying.  For me, the fear, the tension, the anxiety, is all about the weight of the toxic conditions.  Really, flying is easy when you aren't so busy being weighed down.

Ms. George also tells the story of being 12-years-old and beginning to ponder leaving competitive gymnastics.  She recalls the moment by saying, "As I was getting up the courage to say 'enough' out loud, to begin to even imagine saying 'enough,' I was told that admitting limits is precisely how one fails."

We all have those stories, don't we?  Stories of how, just when we were going to stand our ground, the wind was knocked out of us again.  Or how, when we stood up for ourselves, we were told exactly how wrong we were, and were made to feel so small. 

There is a difference between saying "I cannot do this anymore" and "I choose not to do this anymore." The difference, I think, has to do ones ability to see oneself in the after. 

Admitting limits -- to say "I cannot do this anymore" or "I don't think I can withstand this situation any longer" -- there is a weight to that, and a lack of imagination as to what can come when the intolerable situation has passed.  There is a heaviness that holds you still within the stuck point.

To embrace the limit, however...to say, instead, "I am choosing not to do this anymore."  "This situation is no longer tolerable to me"--it releases the stuck point, triggers the imagination, and frees the flight.  Then, the conversation is no longer about the weight of the toxic conditions.  It is about flying.  

*****

And, of course, there is also this (emphasis mine):

But I wonder if, at some point, letting ourselves shatter could be our bravest act.  Can a moment of giving up be that sacred turning point if we infuse it with faith?  When we acknowledge that we have feelings, that we have limits, that we don't have to be superhuman, that sometimes we experience things that do, indeed, for the time being, gut our capacity to go on -- can these moments of recognizing our pain and limits be our most courageous ones?

And oh -- how I love that question: "Can a moment of giving up be that sacred turning point if we infuse it with faith?"  Because, for many, many reasons, my past few months have felt like they have relied on faith.  Giving up, changing gears, imagining new possibilities -- and those moments between the bars, when I was not sure there was another bar for me to catch hold of -- those moments were so infused with anxiety, and fear, and self-doubt, and self-incrimination.  What if, instead, I had let that moment of shattering be a moment of bravery?  What if, instead, I had infused those moments with faith?

So for the past...long time, my body has been saying "you need to go back to yoga."  And I didn't.  Because I was so stressed, and anxious, and such a hot mess I couldn't even make myself eat or sleep.  Who the hell has time for yoga when they're not even eating or sleeping?  Not I.  I was too busy being a hot mess to go to yoga.  (Did I mention that I have a lot to learn?).

So this week, I decided I was done with the excuses, even though my body and I are just barely on speaking terms.  I went on Monday, and I went on Wednesday, and I had a moment -- particularly on Wednesday -- of just shattering.  Allowing myself to be in my body and meet myself, with all of the things I have been running from -- allowing myself to just breathe with the faith that I would continue breathing and that I would not shatter forever. 

You know, I want to make it sound nice for you here.  I want to make it sound like, "I did it.  I fell apart, there, on my yoga mat, and let my body shake and work through the crap, and I felt this beautiful infusion of faith, and it was a beautiful and lovely and holy moment of being wholly broken and holy broken as I allowed my larger, loving self to expand into the cracks."

And maybe that's what happened. 

Or maybe what happened was that I was courageous and vulnerable enough to land in my body and feel the way that my heart is hurting and scared.  Maybe this meeting of myself temporarily gutted my capacity to go on -- and yet, I did.  I do.  In this powerful imagining of so many afters, I focus myself on breathing, and on infusing myself with love in the turning points.

In that, perhaps, is the place from which I take flight.  

Attempts at Feminism: A Series of Missteps

(Trigger warning: sexual assault)

Attempts at Feminism: A Series of Missteps

When the hair stylist is washing my hair, she asks me if the proposed cut has been approved

by my man. 

I ask "what" so many times, she changes her wording.

"Do you have a man, or are you trying to get one?" she asks.

"Woman," I say, quietly, inaudible under the running water.

"What?" she asks.

"Hmmm?" I say.

We fall into silence.

She quietly lathers my hair. 

I tell my boss I am going to the conference based in feminist psychology

because I believe it essential to my understanding of

power, privilege, oppression, social justice, public policy, activism...

and she laughs.

Meanwhile,

I watch the only black woman in the room get told,

"I understood what everyone was saying until you started speaking."

Meanwhile, our white, male boss hides cameras in the ceiling

and no one says a word.

Meanwhile, a client tells me she doesn't want those people around her son --

and I tell my boss I'm gay, so this conflict poses a problem.

She asks me to consider what would happen if the newspaper 

found out the institution has gay employees,

wonders aloud if the institute would support me,

or if somehow

my job could be on the line.

It has taken 7 months

and a new job to poem that.

There is fear

living in those words.

Still.

It's March.

A month when, already,

the smell of rain and

unseasonably warm days leave memories of

fingerprints blossoming purple like crocus around my arm.

My words come slow and

uneasy.  This week, I bite my lip.

It bleeds,

and I can smell him.

March brings a heaviness in my body that is not physical

or spiritual

but is just a thing that lives with me these days

so familiar

I could cradle it

if I loved it enough.

But I don't.

My mother gave my father a collection of every Cosby Show DVD for Christmas.

She said, "I just don't believe the man is guilty,"

told me I was "too sensitive" when I tried to argue,

and countered that I didn't understand because I

"didn't grow up watching the show."

My father then presented four rape alarms he had wrapped as he has

every year since the year I was raped.

My two sisters, mother and I open them under the tree between the

new pajamas and Amazon gift cards,

and I now

have five fucking key chain rape alarms

and an admonishment to "use them,

but don't rely on them and put yourself

in dangerous situations."

We've never had a conversation about what happened,

but when I hold the alarm between my fingers

as I walk to my car at night

I think, this.

This must be

what love feels like.

Keeping the Lid On: The Worst, Profoundly Beautiful Thing

I have done a lot of crying lately. Unfortunately, it has mostly not been the good type of crying and, for anyone who knows me, you probably know that I hate crying. So mostly, I've been crying a lot at home, and in the car, and once in the bathroom stall at work.

I tell you this because, as always seems to happen, when I feel I am just barely holding it together, people start commenting: "You look so great lately!" "You just look so happy." "Have you lost weight? You look fantastic." "I don't know what it is about you, but you just look amazing."

And not just people I know, either. I kid you not, I was at Barnes & Noble last week, and an older gentleman stopped me to tell me how lovely I looked and that he appreciated my smile. Not more than 15 minutes later, some lady stopped me to tell me that she had been admiring my haircut and how peaceful I looked as I browsed the poetry section.

I said thank you, of course, and I smiled and looked oh-so-serene, and then I went to my car and I cried, because fuck serenity, y'all. The whole reason I went to Barnes & Noble was because I couldn't find enough oxygen in my house, and there always seems to be more oxygen somehow when I'm around books and strangers who mostly don't want anything from me.

 *****
Yesterday, I was listening to "The Moth" podcast in the car. The final story in this particular episode was by Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber -- which was cool, because I am currently about three-quarters of the way through her book, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. I like her -- I really do -- and I like what she stands for...but for an agnostic reader, there's a whole lotta Jesus in this book. It's good for me, I think. It's always good to read things that make you uncomfortable. I like reading things I don't agree with to find the passages I find Profoundly Beautiful, and there is much in this book that is uncomfortable, and also Profoundly Beautiful.

What's ironic is that I started this book about 4 months ago, put it down, haven't touched it since October. Friday night, I picked it up and read the chapter "Panic Attack in Jericho."

Saturday afternoon, Rev. Nadia comes on the podcast...telling the story of her panic attack in Jericho.
I clearly needed to hear this story.

(You can, and should, listen to the story here: https://beta.prx.org/stories/167147 . It starts at about 37:00).

The story is basically this: Rev. Nadia goes on a trip to the Holy Land with "20 super nice Lutherans from Wisconsin." She prefaces the story by saying that the worst thing someone could ever call her is "needy." She is strong and independent, and never wants to rely on anyone. So on this trip, she doesn't want to socialize with the group, she doesn't talk to them, she doesn't want to look at pictures of their grandchildren, and she definitely does not want them to know about her fear of mountain roads. Then, the group makes a trip from Bethlehem to Jericho down a road on which Rev. Nadia is afraid of traveling. On the trip back to Bethlehem, the bus fails to make one of the hairpin turns, and everyone has to evacuate the bus...and Rev. Nadia has a panic attack, right there, in front of said super nice Lutherans. 

In the podcast, she says, "I have a full blown panic attack in front of 20 super-nice Lutherans from Wisconsin...which is basically the worst thing that could ever happen to me. And I don't even know when she came up to me, but all of a sudden I realized that Sharon's hands were on my shoulders, and she was saying, 'you're okay. I'm right here. You're okay.' And she was keeping the lid on for me so something didn't escape that I needed like my sanity or the ability for my body and mind to be in the same place at the same time. And she was so strong and calm and amazing and everything I want people to think I am and everything I wasn't in that moment. And she was exactly what I needed, and like an asshole an hour earlier, I had a hard time knowing her name."

And, even though I knew this was what happened because I had just read the chapter in the book not 24 hours before, something about this broke me inside, and I. just. cried.

See, I like to have it together, and even when I don't have it together, I like to fail at having it together perfectly. I like to be in control of not having it together so much that I can make it beautiful. I turn it around, I make it into gratitude, hiding the full and ugly truth of it. I do my hair, and I smile, and I look serene in the poetry section, and no one knows that I cry in my car. I try to find the pieces that I can name Profoundly Beautiful -- like the fog in the streetlights during the walk I took this morning when I woke up at 3:30am and couldn't breathe.

Because for me, much like for Rev. Nadia, the worst thing would be vulnerability in front of others. To be vulnerable -- like truly vulnerable -- to need to trust or rely on someone else....it would be my Worst Thing. It would be my panic attack in Jericho.

In the past year, it's gotten so much easier -- to trust others and to open my heart. But when things get hard -- not just hard, but a specific kind of hard, like they are right now, when my body seems to be asking "...but are you SURE we'll survive this?" it feels like the Worst Thing is happening, or could happen, or might happen. So I want to not show up. I want to be the asshole who just disappears from friending for a while.

I think my breakdown in the car yesterday came because I realized that I really do have people who are helping me keep the lid on...or, who are willing to help me keep the lid on if I let them. And this -- this simultaneously feels like the Worst Thing and the Profoundly Beautiful Thing. I don't understand how it can be both, but it is. It just is.

I cannot do this on my own, and this has been the cause of many, many tears over the past week. When I can't figure something out, when I'm confused, when I need to ask questions, when I need someone older and wiser than myself to offer me advice...it has all felt like a potential Worst Thing. When I have asked, there have been people willing to listen, and proofread emails, and take walks and remind me that I can do hard things.   And each time I ask, it feels like vulnerability. It feels like it could be a step towards my panic attack in Jericho. It feels like, maybe, I don't actually have a hold on that lid after all. And each time, someone has been willing to put their finger on that lid and say, "Hey. You're okay. No, really. You're okay."

So here's what I'm doing: I am working so hard to keep doing this Worst, Profoundly Beautiful Thing of letting people sometimes help me to keep the lid on because I can't do it alone. I keep trying to do it on my own, and every time I do, I end up walking the neighborhood at 3:30am, or crying in my car.
This week -- I will survive this week, in spite of what that bitch Anxiety says.  I can do hard things.

Even if the lid comes off.

Even if I end up having a panic attack in Jericho.

Like An Almost Vow

Like An Almost Vow

I am 7 years old at Bubby's house in the den.

Granddad is teasing, joking -- he's full of tricks.

"Say what I say," he tells me. 

"Just say it fastfastfast."

I nod.  Bite my lip, ready for whatever question will come.

He asks: "I love me who do you love?"

"Me!" I answer, quickly, jumping to my tippy toes to answer fastfastfast.

His face falls.

"What about me?" he asks.  "Don't you love me?"

Shame floods my body as he tells

Bubby, my mother, my aunts and uncles and cousins

that I love myself more than I love him. 

"You've got a big head," he tells me, and that

becomes my nickname.

Big Head.

Today

as I sit next to Bubby's reclining chair in her house in the den,

I hold her hand and

remind her who I am.

She asks,

"Why do you have all those rings on your fingers?"

"I don't know, Bubby," I say. 

"I like them.

This one," I say, pointing to the silver rose I always wear,

"I like because you gave it to me."

She nods.

"I don't know why you wear those things.

You look like you're married to yourself."

I laugh.

"Do you love yourself?" she asks.

My breath almost catches on my answer

but I hear myself say

"I do,"

like a New Year promise

or an almost vow.

She nods

and silence falls between us in

that forgiving place somewhere between

unspoken

and forgotten.

Hello Cucumber? It's Pepper. Or, You who love the world so much

I feel the need to write some sort of holiday post here -- or at least something that gives lip service to the holidays, or the new year, or to the past year and new beginnings.  I feel like I'm supposed to feel alive with the leftover warmth of holiday glow or, at least, some sort of 2015-nostalgia or 2016-hope, or some sort of something that says "December has come and gone.  January 1 has skidded into lives with a screeching crescendo, and onward we go into the new year with resolutions to be better, healthier, more socially conscious, skinnier people who drink more water, yell less, spend less money, are better partners, make more Pinterest crafts, eat less fast food, and spend more time on the treadmill."

But holy mother of god, I don't want to write about that.  I don't want to write about the holidays, I don't want to write about the upcoming year, I don't want to write about resolutions, or non-resolutions, or why I do-or-do-not make resolutions, and my plans to drink more or less water. 

I'll do that, of course.  I always do.  But maybe I'll do it in a week, or two, or in the middle of February.  Sometimes February is the best time to set New Year's resolutions.  The good thing about resolutions, I've discovered, is that your New Year can start any damn time you want it to, social convention and pressures be damned. 

****

So here's what I'm going to write about instead:

I have had several conversations lately about spirituality.  Most of these conversations were thought provoking, interesting, light, fun...but one -- the one that was most important -- this one was hard, and it was hurtful.  I am not placing blame or pointing fingers, but the past few weeks have been hard.  Particularly this past week, I have struggled to breathe above this incessant, nagging weight in my heart, and throat, and stomach.  And this conversation -- this conversation that felt it could have touched on who I am -- it was made out to be wrong.  And I'll tell you here that it's okay, except for the fact that it's not in ways that are too big to put into words.

So then, today, I saw this picture by Brian Andreas, and I thought: This.   

If you're reading this, I probably don't need to convince you that I love the world.  Or that I love people.  Or that I am, actually, a loving and compassionate and whole-hearted being-of-love, as much as a I can be.

But I need to believe it.  I need to believe that I love the world.  I need to believe that I love this life, and that I love people, and that I love in a way that matters.  Because it does matter, doesn't it?  I am loving, and it matters.  It does.

*****

I was listening to On Being the other day -- it was an old podcast I had not had time to listen to from several months ago.  This interview, titled, "The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, and Kinship" was by Father Greg Boyle-- a Jesuit working with gang-affiliated youth in Los Angeles -- interviewed by Krista Tippett. 

Father Boyle states that we are all called to be people through which "kindness and tenderness and focused attempt of love return people to themselves and, in the process, you're returned to yourself."  He provides the example of the following conversation he had with a young man - one of his "homies" that works for him that he describes as "exasperating" and "difficult": "I said, "You know, Louie, uh, I'm proud to know you and my life is richer because you came into it. When you were born, you know, the world became a better place and I'm proud to call you my son, even though," — and I don't know why I decided to add this part — "at times you can really be a huge pain in the ass [laughter]." And he looks up at me and he smiles and he says, "The feeling's mutual [laughter]." And, you know, suddenly kinship so quickly. You know, you're not sort of this delivery system, but maybe I return him to himself. But there is no doubt that he's returned me to myself." (http://www.onbeing.org/program/father-greg-boyle-on-the-calling-of-delight/transcript/5059)

*****

I had a young man come into my office last month who was having a particularly difficult day.  He did not want to see me...or anybody.  He did not want to talk.  Or play games.  Or be alone.  He wasn't quite sure what he wanted, actually, so he yelled at me, and at his mother, and he threw things, and flipped over the table, and crawled under the chair and let me sit in the room with him for the remainder of the hour.  I responded to emails, worked out some kinks in my calendar, and periodically said, "I like the way you're taking deep breaths" or "thanks for keeping your body safe" or "let me know if you feel like getting a juice box for calming down," to which he replied something like "shutthefuckup" or "why are you still talking to me?"

At the end of the hour, I let him know it was time to go, and that I was going to schedule his next appointment with his mother.   As his mother and I began hashing out two possible dates, there was a hissing noise from under the chair. 

"Yeah, buddy?" his mom said.

"Mom," he whispered.  "Make sure to pick the soonest one.  I want to come back and see her at the soonest time possible."

"Hey buddy?" I said.

"Yeah?" he asked, poking his head out from under the chair.

"Thanks for that.  I want you to come back at the soonest time, too."  He looked surprised.  So did his mother.  And my heart -- it felt this rightness that my heart feels when it can speak genuinely and truthfully, even and especially in those moments when you would not expect those words to be said.  They come from some place deep in my heart, and the air in the room changes when they are uttered.  My client extended his metaphorical hand, and I took it.  Not because it was my job.  Not because it was the right thing to do.  But because he dared to put his hand and his heart out there again, and in doing so, he returned me to myself.

"You who love the world so much?  That's what you are here to do."

*****

Several weeks ago, I was at the grocery store.  There was a young woman -- perhaps 14 or 15 years old -- with a developmental disability with her mother in the produce section.  This young woman was clearly antsy and done with shopping, and her mother was clearly not yet finished. 

"Don't touch," her mother said, over and over again, as the young woman ran her hands over each pile of vegetables.  The young woman whined, and pulled on her mother, and rammed the cart into the case.  She picked up the cucumber and put it up to her ear, pretending to talk on the phone, jabbering into the end of the vegetable, suddenly engaged. 

Her mother, seizing the opportunity, reviewed her list and was frantically picking up as much as she could while her daughter entertained herself. 

I was a few steps down at the peppers, surveying the scene.  As the cucumber conversation began to end and the young woman reached over to pull on her mother once more while continuing to loudly state "'LO??  'LO??  'LO??" into the cucumber, I went for it.

Picking up a pepper, I caught her eye and put it up to my ear, "hello?" I asked.  She laughed, surprised.  Her mother looked over at me, and then pretended she didn't notice.

"'LO???" she said again.

"Who's there?" I said.  "Is this Cucumber talking?"

She laughed, like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.  People around us were staring at me -- the crazy lady, talking into the pepper.

"'LO??" she said.

"Oh hello, Cucumber, it's Pepper!  It's so good to hear from you!  How is your shopping going today?"  She laughed and laughed and jumped up and down, flapping her hands excitedly.

The man behind me picking out his potatoes snort-laughed.

Her mother, finished with her shopping, called her daughter to her.  She put the cucumber in the bin.  "See ya," I said to her, placing my pepper in my cart.

And that's it -- she walked away in one direction, and I in the other.  But in that moment in the produce section, the whole world felt right again.  She had, through her laughter, her engagement, through our simple conversation -- she had returned me to myself.

"You who love the world so much?  That's what you are here to do."

I am loving.  And it matters. 

Hallelujah for the Discomfort

Prayer is not a language I speak.

My words get tight, jumbled, stilted,

I'm never

too sure who I'm talking to

or if

they're listening.

I get stuck

not knowing how to address

the person to whom I am speaking

-- if it's he, or she, or they --

I know God

is probably that 10-year-old genderqueer kid

who already corrected me once last week

when I used the wrong pronouns, and didn't think to ask first.

I mess up

every prayer I utter

in spite of my best intentions

But I want my heart to be good at blessings.

I want my blood to be made of hallelujahs,

want my cells to form themselves in the shape of active love

till it's the only thing I'm made of.

So even though my bones

tremble when I speak,

may it be only because I took what was broken

and used it to fuel a fire of intensity

and the pieces --

they sometimes rattle when I get going;

there is no place

for shame, disappointment, being small,

this active love is bigger

than my tendency to be

complicit

silent

passive

in the face of injustice, so

here

is the hallelujah.

Here

is the ferocity,

the intensity,

the whole-hearted

being without apology

this active love alliance is

the hallelujah.

So hallelujah.

My love pulls my spine like a rip cord

that parachutes the broken open umbrella of my heart.

My heart prays

on street corners with signs and loud voices

in quiet circles
in conversation

in how do I help
in listening
in standing up

speaking up

showing up

showing up

showing up...

I was not taught pray.

Was not taught to engage this type of love -

I was taught to be quiet.

To look away,

to not speak,

to look for love in all the wrong places -

can't find my own body holy enough

to hold her whole and sacred,

there are so many layers

to stepping in

but  Brave is just what we call

Scared when she's

holding hands.

So let's hold hands.

Hallelujah for the discomfort.

Hallelujah for every time we pull back the covers on our still-sleeping hearts

to feel what we couldn't feel before,

hallelujah for the pain of light entering 

our too-long closed eyes

let's throw open the shades

and bless the uncomfortable

we'll praise the surprise

hear the sadness

the rage

hold the tears

cherish the anger

let's bless this holy voice

turn our anger into movement that breaks

ground on this moment of truth-building.

Let us build ourselves

into promise-beings of active love;

let us break the truth

so when we speak again

our voices shake

and we let them tremble.

Untitled, because this poem makes me anxious

I tried really hard to come up with a title for this poem, and I couldn't, because the poem makes me anxious...and the more I look at it, the more I hate it, and the more I look at it, the more I want to burn it, and I also think this is a really important poem, so I'm not going to burn it...........but I'm not going to title it either.

So there.

This poem needs a title, because it needs context so you can know what the heck I'm talking about.  It doesn't really come from the poem.  It's gotta come from the title.  Soooo....I can't totally back out of the title.  It's also 1AM.  I should really go to bed.  This stupid poem is being a jerkface.

.....

I should REALLY go to bed.  

The possible titles I came up with were:

"Home" or  Family Patterns

The still impossible longing hits and penetrates with bulls-eye accuracy:

this wanting settles damp and chill like winter in these bones.

She enters without question the way winter descends--

expected, yet unbidden, known, surprising and unwanted,

the chill is still dangerous without protection and, 

even now,

I want to believe this body can withstand the cold;

want to believe myself impervious to the

way it enters without asking:

I know I am standing, but cold has a way

of making me

so small.

This is the way it happens:

slowly.

Like freezing,

but not like the Antarctic,

just like somewhere cold

without a coat, or hat, or mittens

because you thought you had something to prove

or maybe

you just wanted to be able

to feel the warmth

in case it happened.

You know?

Next time, I tell myself, just wear the fucking coat--

but don't we know I like to make her comfortable?

Next time, I will find myself praising the way she is warmer than last year.

Next time, I will emphasize the way she is shining the sun in just the right places, and

next time, I will tell her how those icicles are glistening so nicely and how

the hypothermia is tricking my hands into feeling

so warm.

There are choices we must make

to keep ourselves comfortable and

there are choices we must make

to survive.

My body can count its blizzards

like rings inside a tree--

it recognizes each

as one more choice where there was none

like each year that tree had the choice to grow

or say that's enough now

and stop, but it never did if only because

that's not how trees work --

we know that still in winter, they're growing

even if it's

invisible and

deep and

underground.