# If You Are Ready If you are ready to lose yourself in the wilderness of wanting, if you can bear the weight of names that cling to you like morning dew— if you are ready to walk through the gallery of your own ghosts, to acknowledge the stranger who wears your face in the mirror— if you can sit with silence the way lovers sit together, asking nothing, speaking nothing, just the grammar of breath— if you are ready to be broken like bread, to be shared among the hungry mouths of your own contradictions— if you can love what leaves you, if you can let go of the rope even as you're drowning, if you can call this freedom— then perhaps you are ready for the real journey, the one that begins when all your maps burn, when you stand alone in a room full of mirrors, and finally—finally— you do not turn away.

You're coming back. Tired and ravenous again.
Today I heated up the old love.
(I pulled it from the freezer long ago...)
I'll serve it only if you're ready.

I poured thirst into our glasses...
for passion spent, but also with fresh fire.
But I'll offer them too (only again),
if you can bear her intoxication.

I've always waited for you, and truth be told,
I've spent my strength. (It doesn't even wound.)
But now comes the final question—
are you ready for me or not?!

While I waited, I dusted...the sky.
I turned it blue. I stitched light into it.
I even patched the sun into its heart,
and you—you must sew in the spring...

I smoothed the creases of old mistakes.
I soaked the bitterness in bleach.
I'm ready to bleach it back to faith,
if you're ready to stay home.

If you're not ready, here's the door.
I'm locking it. I'm throwing away the key.
I won't have loneliness's thread
wound into dreams (stripped of memory)...

If you're not ready, don't even tell me
you'll return someday!
From a thousand other tables to taste,
you'll still hunger for my sips...
Will you leave?
Or are you still not ready...