to the boy who used to follow my instagram:

Remember me?
I'm the one who never told you all the things that you should know to love me.
That my favorite color is denim blue (it's phonebox red) and that I collect books (but I really collect ancient breath). That I toss my curls to spin the seas and that my whistle is the west wind and my blood runs in riverbeds in deserts I've never seen. That I walk as if the mountains were always ahead, that I reach for apples even when the trees are bare and leave lit lanterns where the fruit should be.

Remember me?
I shed my skin four years ago and learned the traveler's language, hopping cobbles and sleeping with peasants whose names I cannot spell.
I hang lights from my windows and the boughs of birches to welcome Mary and Joseph and mumble murmurs of contentment into the ears of the air. I am beautiful when I am not paying attention and my laugh is a rural thunderclap, and you would know me if you knew the height of a cathedral ceiling when you're lying on its floor. I drink from the skull of a stag, I surround myself with dusty pages, and I have a weakness for lighting little fires. Five owls guard my suitcase and I tread on sheepskin in the morning.

Remember me?
I am the she-bear who would defend herself with cast iron kettle, with many syllables.
I am the worsted wanderer, woollen and worryless, a cloud scudding, a dog barking, a duck in dabble. I am the street where no one lives, the one that has gone back to thistle and brier, roots eating pavement, herbs reaching to the sun, young trees thrumming in the dusk. I am the washerwoman in full voice with shirtsleeves up around my elbows, and I am the washerwoman in repose, rocking chair on the porch, summer evenings. I am camped out under the Christmas tree. I have one hand on the lion's back and the other clutches the empty boots of the man my heart will love.

These are the things my pictures never told you.
The things that you should know to love me.
Do you remember me?