Baba Yaga The Wise

There was a time
when I believed love
was measured
by what it could endure.

How long it stayed.

How much it forgave.

How quietly
it carried disappointment
without letting the neighbors hear.

I mistook survival
for devotion.

I mistook silence
for peace.

I mistook my own shrinking
for generosity.

The world applauded.

How lucky, they said.

How committed.

How strong.

No one asked
whether I still recognized
the woman
living inside my own skin.

For years
I walked the beaches
looking for agates.

The ocean never hurried.

It did not explain itself.

It broke apart mountains
one patient wave
at a time.

I would kneel
among the stones,
my hands buried
in cold water and salt,

turning over
what everyone else
had already decided
was ordinary.

Perhaps that is why
I loved agates.

They had survived
the violence
without becoming
hard.

Their beauty
was not despite
their history.

It was because of it.

While I searched,
I spoke
to the invisible.

To my mother.

To God.

To every quiet place
inside myself
that still believed
there must be another way
to love.

Not another person.

Another way.

I did not know then
that I was asking
to be returned
to myself.

Love,
as I understand it now,

is not a ceremony.

It is not a promise
signed before witnesses.

It is not a shared address,
a shared name,
or even
a shared history.

Those things
can shelter love.

They cannot create it.

Love begins
the moment
two people
become more interested
in understanding
than in being right.

It is curiosity
with a heartbeat.

It is tenderness
without ownership.

It is truth
spoken softly enough
that neither soul
must raise its voice
to remain.

I no longer believe
love should ask me
to become
more convenient.

Less emotional.

More agreeable.

More grateful
for crumbs
than honest
about hunger.

I no longer believe
that being chosen
requires disappearing.

If someone loves me,

let them love
the woman
who laughs too loudly
when she forgets herself.

The woman
who pockets feathers,
sea glass,
and agates
as though the earth
were forever
leaving her
small letters.

The woman
whose questions
often arrive
before her answers.

Whose heart
still startles
at kindness.

Who has cried
enough tears
to recognize
the taste of freedom.

Do not tell me
who I will become.

Walk beside me
while I become.

Do not polish me
into your idea
of brilliance.

See
the light
already living
beneath my weathered skin.

I have no desire
to be worshipped.

Or rescued.

Or improved.

Only witnessed.

Hold my face
as though it were
a map
you have no intention
of redrawing.

Ask me
what I dream about.

Tell me
where your fears sleep.

Laugh with me
until the ordinary
becomes sacred.

Sit beside me
through silence
that does not ache
to be filled.

Touch me
the way sunlight
touches the sea—

never asking it
to become
anything
other
than water.

If we disagree,

let it deepen us.

If we grieve,

let it soften us.

If we grow,

let it be
toward one another,

never away
from ourselves.

I have lived long enough
to know

that love
is not the absence
of heartbreak.

It is the absence
of pretending.

It is the place
where neither person
must edit
their spirit
to remain welcome.

So if love
finds me again,

it will not find
a woman
waiting to be completed.

It will find
a woman
walking slowly
along the edge
of the Pacific,

one agate
warm in her pocket,

the tide
washing over
everything
she no longer needs
to carry.

And if another soul
should kneel
beside her,

let it not be
to rescue her.

Nor to rename her.

Nor to tell her
who she might become.

Let them simply
look into her eyes
with the astonishment
reserved
for wild things
that have survived
their own winters,

and whisper—

“There you are.”

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Because to be truly loved

is not to be remade.

It is to be seen,

completely,

and still

be chosen.