In my next life I will be a mermaid. I will sit on a rock at sunset and sing a love song. For I have never met you in this life.
I have never known your face nor name
but I am still waiting for you. I’ll create you with words, not with human words but a language of love
some humans find hard to understand.
I will keep my voice. I will not sell my soul. I will enchant the ship and crew.
And you, be it a prince or a sailor, you have to sell the pair of human legs for a tail.
I will take you down. Hold your hand tight swim away from the white crests down to the turquoise depths where the coral reefs shine in green and purple.
Through the schools of fish, where the shipwrecks rest in peace,
to the abyss unknown. There I will be head over tail for you.
In my next life I will be an eagle. From ridges capped in snow and darkness I will soar to heights beyond human sight and mind.
With eerie calls I will claim sovereignty over the heights.
I will build a nest for you and me on the top of the world,
where the stars are freer and brighter,
in the sky of freedom, freedom a human can never have. I will call for you every spring, year after year.
If you don’t come, I will circle above the mountain ridges and river valleys and sea shores.
And I will wait for you in our nest gripped in white darkness and silence.
There I will wait for your love, love that does not burn out nor hurts.
In my next life I will be a sunflower. At day I will follow the sun. From dawn to zenith to dusk with one wide-open eye fringed by lashes of gold.
At night, before I bend my head to sleep, I will reach out in the darkness to touch you in care and love.
If you are not there,
if you have died from drought or withered in blight,
my petals will fall and heart will break.
But I will not break my promise.
For sunflowers’ smiles are not made for frost, nor our hearts are made of stone.
I will ask the birds and winds to spread the seeds across the breadth of all land. There I will meet you, golden and radiant and loyal.
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