In the Woods (With You)

On the good days, our love was like

Wishing we were trees so I could

Tangle my roots around you

And keep our bodies pressed

Tightly together, always

But our embraces always ended too soon,

Because you had some place to be

And I withered into small weeds

When I was away from you

Real trees never have any place to be

And though I was cocooned tightly in you,

I couldn’t help but grow

And as I stretched my branches high,

Dangling bright green leaves like holiday ornaments,

I found myself gradually in shadow as

Your tree loomed to block out the sun

While I had surrounded myself in your branches,

You had grown out and around me and upwards

And once again, I became a small weed,

Hidden away at the base of a large, gnarled tree

And then one day I realized that I wasn’t

A tree or a weed

I was the tree and the weed, and the grass, and the sky

And the bugs and the birds and the bumblebees

I had been my own human being, my own ecosystem

Until I’d let you in too far,

To set down roots of your own

And my whole world had been reduced

To two trees, tangled together