I am struck with a spear filled with memories,

and I stagger. 

I was young, maybe 12, and I knew in my furthest reaches of self that something was wrong with how I was feeling in the world. 

I dreamed of living far away on a farm, doing many kinds of art, spending time growing things and eating them, of making things and using them. 

I could taste the air of possibility, could see the light the therapy there could show me. I wanted to get dirty, I wanted to laugh. 

“That would cost a lot of money, even if I could find a place like that,” my mother had said. 

Healing is so inaccessible, or such a long process to those without the means to get the help they deserve and crave.

The smell of that wish collapses me,

the idea so foreign and still so needed.

Even now, I feel my hands ache for clay and space and freedom. Growth with so little soil is tedious, but still growth just the same.