I fall in love with unsymmetrical faces. I have no love for the perfectly clean and tidy. This holy, messy Earth we are made of sings to me. I glimpse a stain, an imperfection, a story, and I am drawn closer.
I intentionally fail at times. Weak within my own fear of falling short, I fulfill the prophesy. This is my most human accomplishment. Without triumph I see another day to make gains, another day to become better than I am. It’s not admirable to peak in high school, in college, in one’s 20s, 30s, and so it goes… on until Death. My lineage lives long. I’ve a surplus of decades to fuck up and learn within before my time has run out (should my stock be the decider of such things). I have no regrets in this process. No shame.
Instead I practice rejoicing my shortfalls. I revel like a child in the mud. I am dusted with a smell of rot, as are gardens that grow wild. I contemplate all it is to be alive. I contemplate what it means to fear my shadow, or other creatures upon the Earth. I eat food, dirty with soil Mother prepares me to return to. This place was meant for far more than singular visions of perfection and tight-fisted notions of what’s “right”.
At this moment my familiar lays next to me unconsolable, as I pet my keyboard instead of her own thick wonderful fur. I understand this jealousy.
I know what it means to nurse a tear-filled heart, spine pressed against the side of someone unfaithful to my desires.
I know what it is to roar without a bosom to fall upon after releasing my pain.
I know what it means to suffer quietly, a peasant among bountiful friends.
I’m glad she forgives me daily for this work that I do—the stroking of keyboards which are not her body. She quietly and lovingly gives me strength to fight on in my own life.
My feet, naked upon the Earth, are ripped and hardened from the tasks at hand. There are feathers in my cap from battles fought, and wings upon my back which I have grown. My breast is full and will bleed, spill freely upon the land with my efforts and passion. This battle ritual—transforming from chattel to human in the eyes of the Gods, unable to be dismissed by larger society—is the ritual of claiming a place here on land, amongst “the man”, with leverage in law.
I mutter indiscriminately into the wind, “I am here”. Whether I am heard or not is theoretical and unimportant. It is not the aim of this moment I am living. It matters simply that I am, and that I say so. Have I friends who see me? Have I lovers who might call to me in moments wavering within their hearts and minds? Have I fans who see behind the curtain to the core of me, the performer, masked and shadowed for the pleasure of an audience’s dream? Have I parents who understand the arc of a storyline beyond comprehension of their own lives? Have I lineage peeling back through the ages, touching land upon land upon land… We belong to one another. This is my ultimate claim as I stand.
In this moment of unremarkable history, I am soul wrapped in flesh. I am voice, marring and mastering my telling. I am prepared to come and go, tossed this way and that as the wind sees fit. My story continues to be spun. I am thread. I am beautifully, imperfectly stitched.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
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