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| Barefoot |
The Cruelty of Spring
April is the cruellest month, they say—
I've come to know this truth in my bones,
the way daffodils pierce through frozen earth
like memories we thought safely buried.
How merciless this thawing,
this insistence on rebirth
when I had learned to love
the numbing quiet of winter.
Green shoots break open
what was whole in its emptiness.
I watch my carefully constructed walls
dissolve like morning frost.
The light stretches longer now,
exposing corners I had shadowed.
It asks questions I cannot answer:
Why do you fear what grows?
Each blossom an accusation,
each birdsong a reminder
of all I've failed to become
since last spring's promises.
Cruel indeed, this resurrection—
to be forced into feeling
when dormancy had been
such a perfect prayer.
My body remembers what my mind
tried to forget: how hope hurts
most of all, how possibility
is the sharpest blade.
I stand barefoot in new grass,
dizzy with scent and sudden color.
The earth turns regardless
of my readiness to bloom.
Perhaps cruelty is just another word
for necessary transformation—
the violence of becoming
what we've always been.
I wrote this poem for a writing prompt at Poets and Storytellers United. The optional prompt this week was to find inspiration in a line by T.S. Eliot "April is the cruelest month."
