Baba Yaga The Wise

The Unbound Altar

I have spent decades building a cathedral

out of other people’s hunger.

I wore the heavy velvet of “mother,”

the stiff, beaded bodice of “wife,”

and I painted my face until the mask

became the only skin the world would touch.

I was a river trying to fit into a teacup;

I was a broken column holding up a roof that wasn’t mine.

But then—the collision.

Unexpected as a deer in the brush,

no script, no rehearsal, no “how do I look?”

For the first time, the mirror didn’t shatter.

In your eyes, I didn’t see a duty to be performed;

I saw a wild, unedited geography.

I used to think love was a tether,

a long wire tied to another’s heartbeat

to ensure the rhythm of the house remained calm.

I thought I had to be the glue for their broken ceramic,

the healer for their jagged edges,

the silence that kept their peace.

No more.

My bed is now a wide, white continent.

My kitchen is an altar to my own small hungers.

I do not want a shoulder to cry on; I have my own spine.

I do not want a protector; I have walked through fire

and come out with my hair smelling of smoke and victory.

The idea of a partner is a stone in my shoe—

a disruption of the holy frequency I have finally tuned.

I will not play my life in a lower key

so someone else can sing the melody.

I will not manage the clock of a stranger

while my own soul’s tide is coming in.

If you are to find me, find me in my own garden.

Stay in your own house, under your own moon.

Do not bring your broken parts to my door;

I am not a repair shop for the weary.

Bring only your wholeness, your own solid feet,

your own spirit that has wrestled with the stars.

I am not a prize to be won at the end of a race.

I am the race itself. I am the finish line.

I am worthy simply because I breathe,

because I paint, because I write, because I am.

Love me like the desert loves the rain—

not as a possession,

but as a miracle that happens

and then lets the earth be still again.