i

i am a four year old on plastic roller skates, brightly colored yellow, blue, red.

i will fall, and i will fall again.

i will be bumped, bruised, and scraped.

i will get back up.

i am a twenty-four year old ugly-crying in the mirror peering deep into my own eyes.

i had fallen, and i had fallen again.

i was wounded, bitter, with a broken soul.

i got back up.

i am free from religion.

i no longer judge and condemn my own heart.

i am a world of color splashed onto black and white.

i am more.

i was once four walls around my heart.

i am the dynamite that undid them.

i am four piles of dust and rubble.

i am the wide open heart left standing, burning.

i am a tiger, wild, fierce, and ravenous.

i am a tiger peacefully smiling, floating in my favorite river.

i am not a tiger captured and stuck on a circus stage, bewildered, sad, and forced to perform.

i am a tiger in the wild that i am.

i am the innocent, infantile heart birthed into this world.

i entered with a roar, excited, unhurt, unblemished, pure and all-seeing.

i am new born, and four, and twenty four.

i am still staring deep into my own mirrored eyes.

i am smiling, laughing, and crying.

i am recognizing me for the first time.

i am being introduced to my heart.

i am seeing it at pure infancy, and at four, and at twenty four.

i scream “yes!” and “i love you!”

i love myself.

i love myself unconditionally for the first time in twenty years.

i am a four year old creating, imagining, hugging, adventuring without fear or hesitation.

i remember who i am.

i am moon rising like sun over a mountain, silent lightning over the sea, and a crisp, wood-smoke air.

i am the pouring of rain making love to the earth.

i am a rich wine and light bread.

i am the unstoppable burst of laughter with a friend.

i am the brush strokes of paint on a canvas.

i am the sweeps of a pen on a page.

i am the rod-iron hearts outside a fogged window.

i am imagination, and creation, an life.

i am the mirror.

i am my essence, my heart reflecting my heart, entirely, purely.

i am love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

i am all of me.

i love myself.

i am God loving God inside of me.