If you want.

if you want to know me
know the darkness, the silence
in which grow my roots
the grasping, ink-stained creepers
that wind around my arms
sometimes and
drag me into the past

if you want to understand me
understand the urgent smile
the tightrope laughter
on which I teeter
containing an ocean’s raging despair
precarious, eager
to salt the face of my earth

if you want to find me
find the neverending
yearning for something like
how I sometimes imagine
home must feel:
warm, quiet, gentle
what and where I am not

if you want to touch me
touch the knife-edge between
hurricane and eye
where manipulation dies screaming
where meaningless artifice is
ground to powder, and only
stark, ravaged stones speak

if you want to hold me
don’t
I was held once, and it
didn’t end well

if you want to love me
love the great divides
the paradoxes my arms
hopelessly strive always
to span - the masks, the truth,
the calm, the storm, the ache,
the joy, the was and is and
someday will be.