Mortar

Mortar

You are not owed the minds of others.
Not their judgment, nor their mercy,
nor their passing weather of regard.

You are permitted this alone:
your own thoughts, your own labors,
your own brief and burning hour.

What they think of you
belongs to them, as wind belongs to the field
and fire to the ash.

If they think well —
let them.
If they think poorly —
let them.
If they do not think of you at all —
so much the better.

To crave their gaze is to hand them reins.
To demand their mind is to beg for chains.

Stand straight, if you can,
or lean as the tree does into the storm —
but stand by your own strength,
not by the borrowed crutch of praise.

You are already free,
if you would only stop asking for permission.

Lizarding

Lizarding

Sunlight drops
like a slow coin
into the open palms of the field.

We do not stir.
We are stones, we are roots,
we are the old gods
who once knew how to wait.

Heat knits the day together.
A still gathers along our spines.
Somewhere, clouds argue.
Here, the ground hums.

Stillness owns us,
not as weight,
but a widening.

An ear twitches.
A tail curls into a question.
Otherwise, the air moves more than we do,
and even birds forget to shout.

We wear the sun the way a page wears a poem:
wholly,
without trembling.