My tears taste of the ocean,

my breath remembers mountain winds.

My bones are kin with stone and soil,

my hair with grass and fern and leaf.

My blood claims its ties to the sun

through heat and living pulse and red.

This body came to be, has grown,

will age and then, like all, will die;

will rise again in waves and winds,

in trees and fire and swelling fruit.

I will live on through these.

It will be so

forever.

April 5, 2021; originally published January 2016