Before Haystack Rock was a sanctuary,
it walked through the earth as a wound —
a black boiling river of lava
that drank the forest down to ash.

But then came 17 million years of patient tides,
the slow grinding mercy of salt and wind again and again
until the molten jaw cooled into a cradle
trusted enough for a bird to lay an egg.

The lava that ate the world
was now being asked to hold a life.

I will remember this place
when shame shows me the future
using only photographs of the past.

I have spent so much time
treating the worst thing I’ve been
as the most accurate thing I am.

It’s exhausting. And bad geology.

Let there be something tender in my future
that the old fire cannot reach.
Wet feathers in a pocket of stone.
A throat too new to sing.

Let the years sew grass along my seams.
Let a small bird try the hollow.

I’m not asking you to scrub the soot from your palms
or act like your lungs didn't burn.

I know you loved the standing trees.
I won’t hurry you past their names.

But I am here, and learning how
to hold more than my sorrow.

Set the water down when you can.
There’s still space to dream in green.