Mary Oliver Asked

She asked,

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

And I knew.

I knew what my plan was.

But to plan,

I broke.

I broke,

to grow, 

and unfurl.

Because no one teaches you 

that growing 

means shedding.

Means emptying your pockets 

of people,

of places

of the objects

That don’t fit the shape of you anymore.

The shape of me,

something stretched,

something thin,

Something that was maybe

too small

too scared.

I cracked open like a seed 

thinking it was destruction,

of a life grown stale;

not knowing it was the only way 

roots meet soil.

I was a nomad,

searching for a prophet

that spoke in a language unknown,

until I learned to listen.

Every word learnt,

it’s own little affirmation:

begin again.

There were days I thought 

that every smile was mocking me—

how dare they laugh,

how dare they keep shining

when I felt so small, 

so collapsed.

But then the prophet said:

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe the world doesn’t stop 

for our sorrow,

because it knows that light 

is the star to guide us home.

So I stood up, slower than fossilisation,

carrying the remains of every version 

of the me that had to die

so this one could breathe.

I stopped apologising for wanting more.

Stopped contorting myself

in shapes that stretch 

that are too thin,

too small,

too scared.

Stopped calling my existence “enough.”

Mary Oliver asked,

and I am still answering.

Every morning,

in the way I pour my tea,

in the way I forgive myself 

quietly, in small ways.

In the way I choose to stay present —

even when the present hurts.

Because this life—

this one wild and precious life—

was never meant to be neat,

or easy,

or untouched by endings.

It was meant to be devoured,

to be questioned,

to be broken open 

over and over

and over, 

again.

Until all that remains 

is truth

and breath

and the quiet, 

of this wild and precious life.