WHAT I WANT TO GIVE YOU. . .
by Elizabeth Anderson

what I want to give you is difference from me.
Not the melancholy echo
from my mother
passed down like defective DNA
no,
what I want to give
is laughter as
elixir
teardrops as
wisdom, not defeat.

what I want to give are
words,
powerful and sure,
that you know
the feminine as
divine
not fractured and severed
at the knees
of obeying.

What I want to give you
is a meditation
on beauty
not of your own skin
but,
of soul.
A meditation on
earth
to ground your footsteps
on this blue planet
which spins
your connection
to the ethereal.

What I want to give is
my iambic heart
beating with joy and wonder
with shards of splintered
memories
turned into
stones
of tiger-eyed honey.

What I want to give
is love wide-open
different,
and painful
like fruitbats
biting into fleshy melons.

What I want to give
is the ending
spiraling,
neverending, neverending
chaos
of my mothers-heart
within me, within you
forever.

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