Joel Filipe, Unsplash

You know when a song hits you right, when it smacks that spot that is not logic, not thinking, but is pure, magical feeling? I think that’s the feeling of a spirit being stoked. We have a part of us that is not touchable, not tangible but makes us, ultimately, more than a walking sheep shell. A song, a poem, a look, a movie, a touch can stroke that soul-spot. Then there’s the swell of emoting that bubbles up from your stomach all the way to your throat until you get choked up, and you’re not sure why. Your spirit sits in the raw emoting that wants always to spill out, but must also function in this tick-tock space of bodily existing. That tick-tock space sometimes feels so overwhelming, so rigid and out of sync with the me that is unfettered. But we can’t only be what is the spirit of us, not, at least, on this plane. We must also be in this world, a part of a working machine, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing to be, is it? To be part of a working whole? To be a piece of something bigger, something trying to make something more? I don’t know, to be sure. Do you?

I will live in the contradiction of the in-between;

splashing but not sinking,

thinking but not directing,

floating in the peace of knowing I don’t know.

You will not make me see myself silly,

or stark.

I, we, are capable

of simply (not simply) being so many things…

so much more than walking,

ant-like,

through the short eternity

that is our gift

that feels like a burden

that is all we have

until we have that other realm

that we cannot reach

that you don’t believe

that I do.