This poem came in the early morning, just before light.
The night before, I had been thinking about curiosity as an antidote to boredom. About how quickly judgment closes the door on possibility, how presence, especially in stillness, asks us to pause – to meet the moment before reacting to it.
That night I dreamt I was living another life. I was alone. Living by myself. The house was so quiet. I remember feeling a faint sadness. I wandered outside to my garden, feverishly pulling weeds. But the more I weeded, the more weeds there were. I grew tired. Frustrated.
And finally – I stopped. I looked around.
And then I saw it: they weren’t weeds at all. They were part of the garden. Wild, tangled, and utterly beautiful.
I woke up sweating from the exertion of pulling weeds. The faintest light slipping through the window. Before the feeling vanished, I wrote this poem.
What I Once Agreed To
At first, it was safer to know. To plant words like fences and sleep behind their edges. Too many smiles lingered too long, eyes wrapped in kindness that waited. I didn’t know what they wanted, but they pressed against the walls of what I’d built. I had my words. My ideas. They never laughed at me. They lined up neatly, like tidy soldiers. I guarded them and they guarded me. That was the agreement. Beauty was playing dress-up. Too easy. Boring. It wore sequins and slogans and tried to sell me what I never asked for. So I looked away. Called it decoration. Distraction. Fake. Wonder became weakness. Stillness, a trap. I trusted the buzz of my thought more than the sound of my own breath. And then – I went out to pull weeds. Just to tidy what I hadn’t touched in months. But the roots ran deeper than I thought, twisting around old stems I once called mine. Some things had flowered and gone to seed without me. Others had choked from too much crowding. It took hours. A kind of grief. But underneath – dark, soft soil waited. Ready, again. I collapsed. Staring at the ground, then at the sky. What had I been running from? What had I missed behind so many locks? Suddenly, I was curious to look a little closer. To pause a little longer. Curiosity didn’t ask me to change – only to stay long enough to see what was already there. Beauty, wonder – it was all around me. Patiently waiting for me to notice. And stillness wasn’t silence after all. It was the space where I finally heard the sound of letting go.
If this stirred something for you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
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Wow! There is a lot of you in that poem. It’s not just a movement but an entire subconscious.
I loved these lines:
“To plant words like fences
and sleep behind their edges”
…and they guarded me.
The process of weeding is an emptying of sorts until you realise that emptiness is not voiding. It is the ability to live with all that you have inside and around you. To accept it and then to let them be!
A beautiful metaphor.
I would love for you to develop this further. There is so much depth in that.
I understand this feeling with the own voice. I do have the best excuse to stay away from it – no native speaker ☺️. With your greatly artuculated voice, I could switch to laid-back mode.
I'm getting better being more intuitional again. Yet, there's a path to walk for me with patience.