Oh to be alive
As I walked home from the farmers market this morning feeling deeply raw and thin and vulnerable, I looked around me at all the swirling life and the lives that occupy it. This piece unraveled from that place. Take it as an offering or a spell, or maybe a way to remember what humanity is.
Oh to be 18 or 20 or 24, to be as in love as you think you can possibly be. To feel your heart ready to burst
Oh to not have a clue which way to go
Oh to be 4 or 5 or 6 and hopscotching down the sidewalk, avoiding cracks for mom
Oh to be given flowers by someone who is terrified to look into your eyes for fear of falling
Oh to bear witness to a beautiful day
Oh to scream at the top of your lungs on the sidewalk of a city of 1.5 million people, to feel your voice echo on through time and space
Oh to fight to hide your smile as you walk down the street, thinking of the one you love
Oh to sit in the crisp breeze, close your eyes, and forget about everything on Earth
Oh to watch the one you love sing and swoon over the one they love, the one they loved
Oh to wake up slow and sweet, to the sound of nothing but the birds and the breeze in the leaves
Oh to be alive at the same time as you
Oh to be sitting on a bench, to be the soft landing place for a browning leaf
Oh to hug someone soft, someone you just met, someone you have known forever
Oh to lay in the rainbow portal of your bed, to sit in the sunlit spaces etched by the shades
Oh to look up and up and up as tears threaten, as your throat closes in on itself
Oh to feel your heart brim over, a convex creation, to realize what a gift that is, even when it doesn’t seem like one
Oh to smell an October morning, a November morning
Oh to know that somebody, even one somebody, thinks the world of you
Oh to call yourself greedy and selfish and ungrateful, to create inner havoc as a result of your unattainable desires. Oh to give yourself the grace to see that desire can exist outside of logic and geography and good sense
Oh to have options, choices, freedoms, support
Oh to live near the ocean, an entity of interminable wisdom
Oh to duck under the bathwater, to hear your heartbeat in your ears, to know your blood is circulating
Oh to dream and dream and dream
Oh to in that dream, hold you close
Oh to be alive
P.S. In the spirit of humanity, I must remind you to vote on November 5th. In the meantime and for the foreseeable future, take good care of yourself and others.