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Kindness In Cracked Sidewalks

Things are okay. I am safe. I am like those around me, working to complete our tasks meaningful only to ourselves, public lives holding dream and sorrow, public lives demanding witness, a mutual recognition of each other. In this space, we share in air, in circumstance, in atmosphere, and in hope. The public life is a hoping life, even the public life steeped in the abject is one that is always reaching out, seeking communion with the other is a dance of being.

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Eyes Lost In Glittering Starlight

Witness me witnessing you, eyes reflecting each other back infinitely. In being witnessed I become legible, a language of ecstasy intelligible only to you. Read me and tell my story back to me, a past born of circumstance, a present caught in time, a future found in starlight. Guide me through the constellation of my being, reveal myself so that I may witness more truthfully. Allow my reading hands to guide you too.

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A Weaver's Threads of Adoration

To love is to witness, fingertips tracing echoes of who you were, reaching out to who you may become. Drawing your image in the air, contours guides for living softly. Whispering your name everywhere, giving you life in absence so we may share in this moment eternal. Unspooling yourself so as to be wound again, hesitating hands and uncertain bodies.

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A Silent Lover's Plea

I love to love. Stepping out of oneself is to place with all conviction your trust in the one you love, that they will guide you back, that they receive with reverence the reverence of your giving.

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A Woman Scorned

The smiting light of heaven will never touch him, for a man is always justified in his taking, whilst I pick through the rubble naming every piece love.

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Yearning Sunsets and Gentle Hands

To love is to be the horizon, awaiting the beloved after their voyage, a warm embrace after long labor. The gentle touch, the loving pulse, the tired smile, the words unsaid, poetry of a thousand stolen glances. 

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Starbucks (I Love You)

I dropped my sister off at the airport too early, earlier than she had planned, but anxiety ran free, fearing a fight. Her parting was small, a smile and a wave, not a word spoken between us on the drive — all we had was a playlist we tried to make together, overly-cautious driving, the nauseating scent of a hot car, and the pain we both held but were too afraid to lay bare. The night before, I muttered that if she were to die the next day, I wouldn’t care, cursed the family name that brought me into this world, the glimmer of redemption that I sought snuffed out. With the rain threatening to fall, our mild winter’s day a parting from any joy we thought a snowflake could inspire, the night seemed harsh. What anger is wrought out of me, iron hissing in waters of grief that flood at every glance? This is love, I thought, to scream and curse, only to try and find gentleness in dew drops and soon-to-be-forgotten playlists.

She told me that I wasn’t good at trying to end my life. She said I did it wrong, I gave myself room to live, and for that, I gravely sinned. The fact I wanted to die gently – a peaceful goodbye after knowing only violence – was proof that I didn’t mean the cuts. She told me of her own, that should she do it again, she would be sure to succeed. She spat that it should’ve been her, that she doesn’t put herself in violence’s way, yet she still must bear it, that I should have to live with the violences I had invited. What anger lies within her, glass about to shatter, a thousand silent moments in the night that no one else is privy to? I know only a glimpse of her violences, facades of composure paint every part of her beige. We can do nothing but fight, old wounds long scarred opening at every word, the decay of a family long crumbled the only place we can meet. This is love, knowing we will only bleed, but trying anyway.

The door closed, she was alone, I was alone, and we had said nothing. Something broke, but was it us, or did we free each other from our grief? Wordless grief, wordless love, I sent her a couple dollars to buy Starbucks while she waited to fly to someplace kinder, a caption haphazardly typed out. Starbucks (I Love You), silent admission. I drove, a silent thanks came through – this is love, or at least something like it.

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Margaret Atwood, from a poem titled "Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later," featured in Paper Boat: Selected Poems

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— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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𝑆𝑜 𝑤𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑛, 𝑏𝑜𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑐𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Stag with Herb Branch Mounted as a Ring, 1567, Art Institute of Chicago: Arms, Armor, Medieval, and Renaissance

Gift of Marilynn B. Alsdorf Size: Diameter: 2.2 cm (13/16 in.) Medium: Gold, enamel, ruby, opals, and pearls

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/119338/

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A Gift Called Love

To love is to step out of oneself, to make space for our weariness, to hold with reverence the gift of knowing another. 

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Love Lost

I gave so much of myself in the act of loving, all I could provide poured forth into a well that could not be filled. Love has become an act of harm, an evacuation of the promise of dream. I hope to dream of love again.

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Maya C. Popa, from “Pestilence”, Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

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The Flight of Icarus

I do not exist on a spectrum, rather I am embodied polarity. On one end, the abject, spirals of self-annihilation, the other, refinement, systems of respectability. And as I find myself in the here and now, I realize that I do not believe it, that deep down something will pull me back, and I will embrace disintegration. To dream of anything is already a becoming-Icarus, reaching for a Sun that looks upon me with the contempt of someone who knows the depths of my fall. My place here is precarious, and any movement is inevitably a return. My escape feels fleeting, pursued by shadows determined to cast me back into darkness. The abyss promises the comfort of knowing the bottom and that any lower is an escape into nothingness, last pulses of life echoes of something greater than what you became. I am already a becoming-Icarus, I dream so I must fall. How many times will I have to witness rosy fingered dawn before flight is joyful?

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A Moment From October 30, 2024

I attended a talk tonight, the autumn air welcomed people committed to knowledge, the fall breeze held us gently as we gathered in a room devoid of pomp, the only thing bringing us truly together being our appreciation of each other. Perhaps also some pre-talk treats helped us along the way. I sat and listened, notes were taken, notebooks and laptops all firing off to smuggle out nuggets of clarity. I sat and listened, and I realized I was safe. I realized that I was achieving something through presence. I was, they were, and we celebrated being. I always adored learning and knowledge and the production of knowledge. In that moment, it was being realized. 

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— Nitya Prakash