Emergence

-Tayla Paige van Sittert

---

I’ve entered a clearing;

a space where what was sad and stagnant

suckling on the still breast of safety

is unrolling its little fists —emerging

and spreading out, sustained by the dark damp soil beneath;

as if the only way out is through;

as if the solid ground no longer threatens rock bottom;

as if this space satiated with our expiry

is all exhales after months of emergency.

The past reveals that an emergency is a sudden emergence;

“The rising of a submerged body above the surface of the water”,

like clouds rising to crystal clear.

Sometimes such change arrives like an ambulance.

Sometimes it skirts around violent avoidance or active addiction.

Sometimes to transform means grieving what is lost.

The glutted, distressed gasps

for air, for dimension, for selfhood

for the more I know I deserve

—heaved out into space

where emergence takes place.

If I stand still enough, here, now,

I might hear the slight succoured sound of

a becoming —as if heaven only comes after heaving.

See this renewed sense of seeking and self;

flow in hopebeams and godrays;

flung from the sun through the leaves;

splintering the shadow shade;

to spark the green of growth.

In this light, I finally see that black is just

layer upon layer of dark green.