for everyone trying to remember what freedom feels like

Do you remember what it feels like to be unruly?

to root in the service of searching & following the call of not-yet-known through earth we’ve been told to let alone (too dirty, too unpredictable, too full of death, we’re told by those who have forgotten where life comes from)

what does this feel like? when we’re dirty & unpredictable (even to ourselves) & full of death & full of life, is this what freedom feels like?

freedom is teeth gnashing like in the stories of terrible no-goodness, ripping holes in what we’re meant to mend, the NO extending from bodies outward like fingers, like tentacles of the octopus that obey their own brains (freedom is allowing your brains to be many, too)

freedom is sunflowers, open faced & following the sun, unruly in their loyalty, teaching accountability to that which gives us life, learning what freedom looks like when it’s an unruly YES that rips through your wide open face & lets back in all the light we have been reflecting back at everyone around us.

Do you remember what it feels like to collapse?

puddled on the floor, salted like february street sludge by our own tears, our own failures slithering across our bodies, down back to the earth. freedom is here, too, in all our miseries & shames, in the ways we break apart just as much as in the ways we hold ourselves together.

When meeting freedom eye to eye for the first time in too long, the collapse might be the most important part. us humans & our hardening, the ways we worship our fragility as self—collapse reminds us of freedoms to start again, to rebuild, to walk around cracked & unsure for a long while, like the egg still held together by its insides even after it gets whacked against the counter a few times.

(i dunno, this poem might be collapsing too, but still i’m here, listening. crying if the tears come. quiet, contained in this cracking body, this temporary treasure of form.)

Do you remember what it feels like to be satisfied?

the deep wet breaths of pleasure call us, those outpours of relief at the tenderness of our own bodies are the liquids that nourish depths of feeling. there is freedom here, too, in the terrifying acknowledgement of need & hunger. there is freedom here, too, in the overflowing fear of being fed what feels good, of being given what i’ve been asking for. i can still receive i can still receive i can still receive i repeat into the folds of reality i can’t yet see but sense their deep breaths of answering in return.

freedom lies in the spaces we come back to, together, in all the moments of pleasure you thought you lost, in all the moments of gratification that were denied us so many times that we’ve learned to be satisfied with denying them too.

those moments, they’ve formed a hollow, a cave, a threshold between here & futures of satisfied cravings scaffolded by rested bones, held together by skin flushed with remembering.

freedom is feeling hunger & freedom is calling out.

freedom is calling out & freedom is receiving what you’ve asked for.

freedom is receiving what you’ve asked for & freedom is finding yourself satisfied.

Do you remember what ease feels like?

Some days i feel like a pinball bounced around from need to need, call to call, paying attention with all my senses at the same time so i can simply keep up with the daily tasks of making home: listen to the child speak their dream while i examine the plant to see what it needs while i smell for the right almost-burnt-but-not-quite smell from the oven, while i let my fingers feel my way through the suds & sharp knives of the sink, while i taste my own taste to remind myself i am me & check if i’ve eaten today.

there is freedom here, too. we must remind eachother, there is freedom here too.

here, where we don’t get to be fragile with so many lives to care for & tend,

here, where strategizing ways to meet all the hungers calling to be fed is the way the world worlds itself.

there is freedom here, too, in this fullness of sensory overload & baseline mild panic.

there is freedom here, too, which means there is ease here too—not ease like comfort & control but ease as refusing to fight the currents of our lives.

in the fullness of pushing at our edges, leaning with all our weight, digging our feet in, committing our lives to the ongoingness of impossibility— ease arrives when you bring you & you & you & you & you & we push where we can, pull how we can, cook what we can, care when we can… because we will find at some point that what we thought was eternally closed gives, it jumps into place like a pop-up tent that all of a sudden becomes itself & now we can stop trying to pry it open.

after all the pushing & pulling, all the committing & doubting & recommitting, all the denial that started the moments we were left alone to hold feelings that were way too big for our tiny tender bodies to hold, all the fighting to make our lives make sense, all the working to scaffold & shape what we think we need, all the struggle to teach our kids which roads to walk & how to stay out of everyone’s way, all the urgency to dominate our unruliness & ignore our collapse & deny our satisfaction & shame our ease…

now we can look around at eachother, at the new freedoms found through the impossible effort of longing with all our might, longing for belonging & connection & love & all that we’re told must be earned.

freedom is here, where love floods in through all the sources we’ve (been) denied.

freedom is here, calling from futures-to-come that ask us only to feel.

remembering to feel, reminding eachother how to feel, that’s how we remember freedom.