And then the day came,when the riskto remain tightin a budwas more painfulthan the riskit tookto blossom.—Anais Nin

Blossom when you’re ready, but rough. Be quaint explosive. Andto those who spoke you dim, dismissed your failed green, thentook your witless imagination for manic romps in the drizzle—theit named Weather was wee drama, cartoonish in the clutch of day.

Risk the lush you have never seen. Forget how winter first came—the unrhymed shudder, the gray dressed like your father; when,thanks to the loud religion of wind, you couldn’t find your face, and thepainful trick of season moved through you like a knife of ice. Risk

more. Risk smolder. Risk blood flower. Risk voice. (Like you, it toowas often just storm not knowing why.) Risk is why you remain,bud like an opening hand, sprouting your mere devastation of tightaroma, why you’ll strut thorn, sink flytrap canines into bland satin,

into a landscape of concrete, unloosing the notion of grass. What atight-clenched jubilation you are, what a plump thirsting bud,remaining unswerved in your reach for any sky. If your aim wasto unfurl, terrify, sparkle with damage, you’ll do that and more.

Risk lurks in every inch of soil as frost or scorch, and it’s painfulthe way soil can stunt the upward it insists upon. You’re more thanwhen you were just a whimpering mistake beneath the dirt, theCamellia clawing for first breath. Risk that breathlessness. Risk

day, risk slap of sun, risk yawning wide, risk the itch and choke of it,the damned wheel of days, growth and all the dirty water it took.Then be that quaint explosive. Growl out with howling, red vibrato,and own everything weather has done to you. Bellow, girl. Blossom.