She still makes compromises with a dead man, but she thinks she might want to compromise with you.
She thinks, and the thoughts in her mind affect the feel of her. If there is blankness in her mind, there is blankness in her touch. If there is mischief, it will pirouette from her pores, and that's why she falls for storytellers.
She likes her touch to dance.
Tell your stories, she will float in them. Her skin will drag along yours, leaving goosebumps, tiny chapters on your skin that hold the pieces of the stories that drip from her movement.
She still tells a dead man's stories, but they are dust now. She spins in her air- a leaf in the wind, dancing with the dust that once was liquid, that once danced in her veins. She is waiting again for that surety, for that promise, for a will that meets hers with enough strength that she bows to it, on occasion. She is waiting for a chance to have secrets again, secrets she'll never whisper, secrets you can only feel. Secrets you can only feel if she touches you with them in mind, if she keeps you in mind at all, if she touches you at all, if she pushes you.
She is strong, and will push against you, hard enough to knock you back, hard enough to knock you down, because she is testing you. Testing the words of you, the roots of you, your bark, your bite.
Trying to find the surety, the promise, the story. Trying to find a reason to compromise, trying to find a reason to drip with stories and blossom against your earth.
The world wants to know what she's looking for, the clouds drop little translucent microphones- raindrops designed to hold her secrets, if she would only whisper them. Sister leaves flock to her, in hopes she will write her wants on their backs, so on their final journey they can carry her seeds of thought back to the center of the universe.
The west wind tells her to keep on floating. That she is rootless now, that she blossoms in air, that maybe she always was, always did.
The east wind pushes candidates across her path, mimicking the pattern of the roots that once held her, trying to fill in her blanks. This one is made of brown, and the cracks in his bark hold grief permanently in place. He is like the other. This one leaks creation, orbs of sap sharpened by imagination. He is like the other. This one is ancient on the inside, like the other- as old as she, perhaps.
No one knows how old she is for sure. She moves too quickly, spins too wildly, blooms without thought to season- no one ever seems to want to catch her, even when she wants to be caught.
The universe asks who she wants, and she doesn't know. She's supposed to sign here, check this box, check that box, check any box. But she won't. She can't visualize a color or texture, an intent or purpose, she only knows that she'll know when she finds it.
She'll know when she pushes up against him, and he pushes back. When she pushes up against him, and he does not break or shudder or bend or bow. When she pushes up against him, and stories are expressed in the imprint she leaves in his skin, in the bite she leaves in his bark.
She is strong, and searching for stronger,
but there's no checkbox for that,
and there's no way to warn a poor sturdy root
when she blows his way.
