Poetry
Skin
I am a mountains girl through and through
And yet being here, life feels different
I no longer have to wear four layers of skin to protect myself, insulated from the cold but also from life
I look different too
The skin on my legs and arms has turned a gentle pink tinged brown
The blues in my clothes and my eyes sparkle with the Agean and the pebbles on my bracelet
I can’t hear the world here
I can’t hear the hum of the big city next to me, I can’t hear the tourist making lots of noises, I can’t hear my familial story spoken in whispers through my cells
I can just hear… me.
The stone moves me, compels me to listen
To stop, to be, to stare into the distance without a thought in the world
I can escape the madness here
My body belongs for the deep rest, this place is able to equate in my nervous system.
I want to drop down down down into the pool of wonders and swim there for hours or millennia…
It doesn’t make any difference, time is not real anyway.
I don’t know if I will go home and yet I long for the safety and security the Mountains offer me
They draw me back.
They pin my heart between folds of sandstone and rainforest fern
They pull at my body.
And yet when I am there, I’m not exactly restful
The chores fill my days, the life administration piles up like mouldy leaves that won’t even burn in the wintry fire
And I am restless
I am forever restless.
The gypsy in my soul yearns for movement; for aeroplanes, for trains, for buses, ferries, taxis; all the modes of movement that allow me from to move from one locale to the next, with the help of another
The kindness of strangers turns out not to be a phrase or common ode but an actual necessity, a place to reside, a familiar mode of letting other people, strangers in fact, take care of you, so that your heart and body can heal, so you can surrender to the stories within you
Renewed, refreshed, enlivened? Maybe. We’ll see. If this Agean can get into my skin, it can get under it, through it, beyond it, until the roots are no longer binding me in the Mountains, no longer pulling at my trunk, my branches
For I am a tree when I am there, solid and sturdy, reaching always for the light, higher and higher, struggling
But here I am a flower, purple, precious and delicate, here I warm and I am alone
Here I don’t wither in the sun, it warms me, inviting.
Where this journey leads, I’m not sure, but I like being a flower
afkcs 28.06.25
