The House Has Legs

Three years ago,
I thought I was dying.

Slowly enough
that I still made breakfast,
answered questions,
carried on.

I was living in a relationship
I could no longer be well inside,
trying to keep the peace
with pieces of myself.

I knew how everyone else felt.
What they needed.
What might upset them.

When I asked myself
what I wanted,
I could barely hear the answer.

There was always a reason to stay.
Someone to worry about.
Something I owed.
The terrible possibility
that choosing my own life
would make me selfish.

I watched the seasons
through the glass
and wondered how the trees
could bear to begin again.

Somewhere in the woods,
an old woman
was splitting kindling.

She did not ask
whether I had tried hard enough.

She set another place
at the table.

Eat, she said.
You have a long way to go.

I had been taught
to fear a woman
who answered to herself,
who kept a fire
and decided
who could come inside.

But Baba Yaga
had room for my anger.
I did not have to make it pretty
before bringing it to her door.

I told her about duty.
How heavy it was.
How long I had carried it.

She listened,
then asked me
to set it down
long enough to eat.

I cried
with the spoon in my hand.

Leaving meant
someone would be unhappy
and I would have to let them.

It meant hearing
all the old accusations
inside my own head
and packing anyway.

It meant choosing
my mental health,
my body,
my chance at a life
I could bear to wake up in—

before everyone else
had agreed
I was allowed.

For a while,
even freedom felt frightening.

I kept reaching
for burdens
that were no longer mine.

The old woman
gave me a broom.
There was a threshold
to sweep,
a small patch of ground
I could tend.

This past year,
I have been learning.

That guilt can follow me
through a door
I was right to open.

That loving someone
does not oblige me
to keep living
where I am coming apart.

That I can disappoint a person
and still be kind.

When I say no to more soup,
she takes away the bowl.

No thunder.
No forest closing around me.

I am still getting used to that.

And life—
how beautiful it is
to have room for it.

To make plans
because I want to.
To work,
to play,
to come home tired
from a day I chose.

To hear my own laughter
and recognize it.

I used to think
I had to finish suffering
before I could have joy.

Now I find it
with bills still on the table,
with an aching back
and paint on my hands.

Some mornings
I sit beside the stove
and wait for warmth.

The old woman
does not hurry me.

I am learning to rest
without preparing
a defense of my tiredness.

She has crooked fingers,
an alarming laugh,
and no interest
in becoming easier to manage.

I am beginning
to resemble her.

Especially when I dance.

Especially when I forget
to watch myself dancing.

Yesterday,
I caught myself making plans
far into the future,
as casually
as setting bread to rise.

Outside,
the trees were losing
everything gold.

I opened the door
to let the air in.

Beneath me,
the house stretched
one enormous chicken foot,

then the other.

Where shall we go?