Last night I dreamed of an eclipsing moon and a swirl of spirits howling above, that only I could see.

It’s been a common theme of my life that I see what others do not.

It has led to great disparagement and disconnection, too.

I dream of a place where I belong, where I can breathe in the trees and the rain that comes off their leaves and know I am home.

Where I am seen for all the interstitial pieces of me. Even by non-seeing beings.

I was on a magazine cover, there were four pictures of me, at an age where I was coming to be.

I was the only one to buy it, but to hold it in my hands was the peace of a lifetime.

As long as I had this little girl, I was fine.

I am journeying out of another’s shadow, and in casting my own, I am seeing that I never had one at all.

Yet here I am embodying anyway.

Here I am living and alive.

I was never meant for the pirate ship out at sea,

Or the parties and cliques on a boat on a tenuous sea.

I was always meant to be among the leaves, even if they were the only ones who had me.

It only ever mattered that I had me.

It’s hard to recognize that all I ever wanted, all I thought was mine, was never meant to be.

That there was wasted effort over a lifetime.

But here I am anyway, living and embodying, as I said I would be.

And in doing so, I come home to me. As much as the leaves.

There was once upon a time where I stood in a place and breathed in that green and knew who I was and that I belonged.

And much like that, I stand now, far away from that location, and everything else that mattered.

And I breathe and know me.