Inner Escarpments
by Odin Roark

“I hate you,” says the child
“I love you,” says the mother

Later

Echoes reverberate
I hate this
I hate that
Both the child-now adult
And the adult-now senior
Find scars still need healing

Still

Just as nature embraces its upheavals
Its steep slopes
Long cliffs
Everyday faults and erosion
So too one’s inner being
One’s heart and mind
Knows its domains
Of differing elevations
Depths
Fire
Unpredictable rises and falls
Even the calm
Do as they need to do

Might it be
We are merely transportation
For the inner-self?

Like earth’s nature
Our sometimes-molten rage
One’s animus needing release
Will rise and fall
Leaving behind
Jagged edges
Smoothed by the breath of composure
Working beside the liquid passion of heart

The question remaining…

Might the inner-self
Be not part of the body
But an existence
In the body
A fulfillment of its own
With us merely
A sometimes-novel transport
Smoothing out the eruption of birth
With life’s folded wrinkles of death