06/21/2026
Beautiful and powerful words. I share them with love and gratitude for life’s journey.
Transformation
When a person no longer fits inside their own life,
the old ones say,
it is time to enter the forest.
Not to hide.
To be found.
She left her shoes at the edge of the trees.
She left her name on a stone.
She left her mother's gaze
hanging on a low branch,
where someone might find it later
and know she had not forgotten,
only gone.
Four days and four nights she did not eat.
That is what the old ones teach.
A body that has been hungry long enough
will begin to hear things
a fed body cannot.
The first night, the wind came.
She thought it was speaking to her,
but the wind was only sweeping her clean,
the way one sweeps the house before a guest arrives.
The second night, fear came.
She saw her father's face in the dark.
She saw every wrong thing she had done.
She wept until there was no water left in her body
to call tears.
The third night, silence came.
For the first time in her life
she heard her own heartbeat
with nothing else laid on top of it.
The fourth night, a bird landed beside her.
It did not speak.
It did not need to.
It only looked at her the way
ancestors look at their descendants
when the time has finally come.
She held out her hand.
The bird did not fly away.
The bird stepped into her
through her palm,
through her wrist,
along her arm,
into her chest,
where it found its seat
as though that seat had been waiting for it
since before she was born.
When the sun rose on the fifth day,
she stood up.
Her body was still the body of a woman.
But something else was living inside it now.
Something older than her.
Something that had once been
the ancestor of someone,
and had now
chosen her
to continue.
The old ones called this
being given the true name.
Not the name her parents gave her when she was small.
The other name.
The one the forest knows.
The one only those who have entered
and returned
are allowed to hear.
She did not speak that name to anyone.
The old ones did not speak their true names either.
It is the last thing that belongs only to oneself
in a world
that has taken so much else.
She picked up her shoes at the edge of the trees.
She picked up her mother's gaze from the branch.
The stone with her old name on it,
she left where it was.
It no longer belonged to her.
Art & Poem by Jan Sky
❤ This artwork can be made into a custom puzzle upon request.
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