Intention (A Prose Poem)

To be still in the deep end of life, its waves spinning us unconscious, my mother would sing. Imagine the vastness of water, how its hunger only knows to swallow and spit out the ruins. Now imagine a body, beaten beyond its form, and yet, thrusting itself out with a song. Had you seen her dance, clumsy and filled with a drunken joy, you would have thought nothing of her wars. The body of her husband decaying while laying next to her. Her children building a wall off their grief. And even I would leave everything behind without a fight. Once she said, if you thought you’d die from something and you didn’t, if you ever thought life would hook you from the neck and leave you dangling, your legs suspended in a pit, and somehow you escaped, you did not just escape. You resurrected, the vessel of your being took on a new shape. For the thought of death, in itself, is a small killing, a small burial. Every day, someone digs the earth to make room for themselves. Now tell me, why will anyone come back to life and hold their breath?What the world will do is make you forget how close you came every time to surviving. When they ask you where you’ve been, tell them of the fires but also of the quench. Of the darkness but also of the light. Yours is a kingdom of stories- burdened and yet, sanctified and you shall carry every piece of it. For good measure, my statement of intention is sculpted out of memory and the day is incapable of stealing my joy. I have looked in the face of loss and pulled myself out. I am free of anything we can name.Today, I will not kiss the ground. I will not play dead. The instrument of life flutters inside of me and I strum it hard. There’s enough chaos to leave the body rusting, families crushed to nothing. There’s enough fear that has us holding our own hand, even while people reach out to us, calling us by our name. Look, while the world spins to its end, I’m making love quicker than you can tell two countries apart. I am dancing, faster than an orphan runs into the arms of someone else’s father. And I am breathing, better now than all the lives I’ve lived. What a strange victory it is, what blessing, to stand in the eye of a storm and keep your heart from slipping to the ground.