Hide and Seek

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Would it spell danger to travel
the land of young trees?
A child without its teeth
gnawing on the virile branches rich with sap;
Her little chest barely covering
the carvings of names on a peeling bark.
She would never know her name
nor the extent of her generosity.
Her hands would grasp the end of the branch
like the hollow opening on a conch,
her eyes would close, full of curiosity
enamored by the scent of grass and seas.
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Beyond the grasslands are the plains,
a place where the wind had sown her impurities.
It reminds her of a young boy,
the earth as flat and as smooth as his own abdomen.
Not so much as a tongue can distinguish its graininess,

nor the creatures that come out in the evenings
once the heat of the soils lose their intimacy.
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Something had grown here once before.
An ocean perhaps, with creatures as silent and frisky
as the children who played hide and seek
far beyond the shadow of the growing trees.
She used to love and used to get hurt, playing and losing
and finding each other in the wilderness of water.
Their names had been etched by other lost children

on the shores sifted by the anxious tides.
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Each game is playing and losing and finding each other.

At the time the boy becomes a young man,

he discovers something that grows within himself

the need to hide and seek for the young woman.

And at the time the girl becomes a young woman,
she discovers something that grows within herself
a gnawing distaste for awareness.

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