She Admits

She admits to loving words
She admits to carving them, splicing them, celebrating them, spinning them, straining them, birthing them, magnifying them, spilling them, soothing them, squandering them, holding them in her mouth like rainwater, tasting them, swallowing them, summoning them, venerating them, delighting in them, smoothing them, laughing at them, twisting them, She admits to believing them
Words . . .

She admits to expecting too much from them
She admits to holding them on her palms
As though she thinks she is all twelve Olympians
Raising her hands and expecting a world
From words
She admits to stretching them, to expecting them
To magically multiply to make them
Disappear and leave the emptiness ringing with
Meaning

She admits to wanting words
To wandering the halls hungrily searching, to knocking over plates and
Flowers and candles it a rush for a pen and paper
She admits to a burning desire, to waking in the night on fire for
A word, to finally finding the right one and being struck silent by
Adoration

She admits to printing out words so she can touch them
Quick wet ink against her finger whorls

She admits to writing words on the walls of her office
She admits to writing words on the walls of her heart
She admits to finding them blue and translucent swimming inside her wrists
floating behind her elbows, hushed at her temples
Where the skin is thin
Words . . .

She admits to the darkness, what she admits
to so few
Words of weakness, of vast insecurity,
A precariousness that childhood never swallowed
A terror that never has been answered
Blood on her wrists, blood like oil
Not mixing with tears, not mixing with rain
In a bruised, broken rainbow long darkly dreamed, not enough, not
Enough, not enough, not enough

She admits to
question still
if her words, her colors, can possibly be
reason enough
to justify even
Breath

No less pay this long ransom
On a gift
She cannot deserve


©Edwina Peterson Cross