i.
What sustains me is the lushness of vulnerability.
I live in pursuit of exposure, soul-baring, the practice of being what we are without apology. We are all different. No one else carries our specific memories or desires. No body is formed exactly like ours. We play at oneness, but shared experience only stretches so far. In the end, we are left with the reality of what this really is—a colony of beings, endlessly individual, utterly separate.
ii.
Sometimes, I catch snippets of the light inside us.
Maybe it’s the boy with a pegasus tattoo laughing outside in the cold. Maybe it’s the parting words of the librarian as I scrape my pile of poetry books off the counter: Take care. Maybe it’s the eyes of old woman at the corner of this street and the next, so clear and penetrating, like an elephant queen’s. Maybe it’s as simple as the wisdom offered to me by a friend, as quiet as the man tipping his face toward thin, Decemberish sunshine.
I hunt for it. I await its presence. Where is it, I wonder? Where’s that throbbing openness I covet so fiercely? When I am feeling especially aware, I see it everywhere. Beneath these layers of makeup I apply to my skin. Behind the gloss of sitcom utopia. Under the practiced apathy of all of us, under our coats and scarves and skin, curled up over our hearts, in tangled love with our veins and aortas. A luminous octopus, a sort of eight-limbed love.
It’s there, yes. Indubitably.
iii.
Tell me what shakes you.
Tell it to me like you would tell someone you are in love with them. Be trembling and slashed-open. Be frightened. Stop holding your facade together. Don’t clutch your persona so tightly. It cannot contain you. Let it pass away.
Tell me what elevates you.
Is it the warm burn of your favorite song? The tin-gray feathers on a starling’s belly? Bonfires in autumn? Say it now. Quickly. Without pausing to make it coherent or acceptable. Be as jagged as you like. Give up the dream of normal. You’re dirt and madness and screaming beauty; normal is never going to fit you. It pulls on you already, pinches your elbows and upper back like an old ill-fitting sweater. Loosen your fingers. Let it fall.
Tell me what moves you.
What climbs into your cells and bones and tells you to inhale, to make something of your precious time here? Speak it. Speak it, and it will wash over you like a great light, and it will feel good, better than you knew possible. It will feel like being alive, which is what you are. Not flawless or bad or worthy or weird. Alive. A deep continual sweetness of breath.
iv.
I’ve fallen in love.
I’ve spit words onto pages I later tore and tore away. I’ve run into the ocean in mid-October and shouted at the cold pooling around my ankles. I’ve cried at the death of a dragonfly. I’ve taken a fine edge to my flesh because I could not bear to be the person I am. I’ve said ridiculous things. I’ve walked beneath ambulatory stars and felt great, expansive joy at the fact of my existence. I’ve pinched the wobble of my upper thighs, the places on my body that are round and soft, been ashamed of it. I’ve written things that will never see daylight, because they are too indicative of the darkness I carry with me. I’ve been very loud and very, very bright. I’ve longed to tell people how I feel about them, how my heart swells or shrinks in their presence. I’ve bled. I’ve changed. I’ve danced so hard I thought I would die, and laughed afterward, laughed and laughed.
I am a creature of unearthly peculiarity, and I will not pretend otherwise.
This is my power.
This, too, is yours.
v.
It feels like hell, I know.
Nobody ever likes saying I want you or I need you or I am afraid or I love you. In the moment, the fear is nauseating. In the moment, we are small as children, and just as breakable. But you have to trust in the majesty of vulnerability. You have to trust that even though your throat is a vice and your heart is jumping like hell, these things you’re admitting—they are reaching through. People are listening. Their souls are shifting into resonance with yours, and you are there, standing together in your realness, all the armor gone, all the light rushing in.