endlessly changing shape

I came back to the woods because of their

Constance, the way they stay the same

all the while things are endlessly

Growing, decaying and changing shape.

Moss slick with last night’s rain.

A crow cracking something small between its beak.

Sap bleeding down bark like amber.

The air smells of rotten wood and green —

Under heavy canopies and a grey sky I am left alone

with what’s still alive in me.

They said pain is a teacher.

Maybe. But I’ve met teachers

who only loved the sound of their own lesson.

Forgiveness, they said, is freedom.

But I’ve seen freedom chew through its own leg

rather than surrender.

I’ve seen the fox return, limping,

to the same coop,

because hunger outweighs memory.

Tell me — is that forgiveness,

or simply need?

Every tree here has heard your name.

I've cried it enough times

Even the stream stutters around it,

like a mouth learning how to pray again

after biting through the tongue.

The forest doesn't favour virtue.

Only survivors get to keep their bones.

And I am disgusted to recognize myself as one of them,

raw-throated, half-cured,

still following the scent of what I briefly held

Before it, too, chewed through its limbs.