I cross my heart, or it crosses me. Who can tell? Physics can't prove that my feet aren't still over moving ground, a treadmill that is the earth. I cross my heart like fording a river, and we all know how rivers flow: I am never the same woman twice.



Last night I was washing the dishes, humming away in a wallowing sense of comfy quiet, when loneliness ambushed me from the side. It took me a moment to really notice: my mind leapt to the defense without missing a step, producing a hundred distractions to keep me occupied. But soon all the dishes were clean, all the websites checked, and I sat back down on the couch and let myself ring hollow. I want the reassurance of company, of your voice.



I also want solitude, which is what I've got. Empty space creates room for opportunity; empty space creates room for growth.



Emotions move like clouds, casting shadows as they go.



My brother calls me a heartbreaker: I am afraid that he is right. I have struggled and struggled to be responsible in my loving, to be honest, to be fair. I have tried to only make the promises I thought I could keep, and to keep the promises I have made.



But the ground shifts beneath me sometimes. It is no excuse, I know, but it is true. Sometimes I look up and my horizon has moved. What is the honesty of staying where I cannot stay? There is nothing fair about obligation, and resentment is no place to build a life.



But guilt raps bony knuckles on my breastbone - once he called just to hear my voice on the answering machine. How could I say I'd changed my mind? How many chances do you get if they are squandered?



Besides. You could travel the world for all your life, and never really know a place. One day you just say: Here. And set your roots. Right?



My heart crosses me. I wake one morning to find my roots are shorn, my branches bare. I topple in the slightest wind. I dream the same dream for forty nights in a row and wake with alfalfa in my hair. I sit beneath a juniper until the berries turn to stone. I burn myself to the ground.



Empty space creates room; the river changes even as you are dipping your hands to drink. I look up from the bank and I am made of granite rock and creosote, my horizon a rising sun. I look up and I am made of granite rock and gull cry, my horizon a gathering wave. I look up and I am made of flesh and sand, salt and eroding bone. Black feathers. White sky. I do not know how to say no to love. I do not know how to temper desire; mine has never been the middle path.



I spun the globe and my finger landed seven times on the sea. The oracle tells me the question is not mine to ask; her snake watches me languidly until I leave. A cherry blossom tumbles to the ground with the bee still inside. The best I can do is hold to honesty; I cross my heart, and wake dripping on the other side.