hunger

wonder wonder wonder wonder

prompt: what is unsought will go undetected.

do you know the impossible knot inside of you?
the one formed in childhood when you were hurt
that remains stuck
knotted for how long?
so long—too long
long enough to become the impossible knot
the knot that is holding blindly on to your forgotten hearts
your hearts the world let down
too much to admit into the mind
the most tender that you don’t dare let anyone else touch
the template for your great fears and lash outs
source of your truth all tangled up
where vulnerable spontaneity bottles up
for safety
in tried and true heuristics
unliving dead but pre-proofed truths
truthy as long as we all accept them
sandcastles of belief
when god, i mean, is exactly that
that good which does not depend on my maintaining it
(oh that great fear)

when you find truth inside
that you know
only you can possibly know
because it looks like you
dances like you
smiles like you
and shows her face when you cease clinging
and bear her name
what name do you think you should use for that truth?
who can you speak to of it?
who is safe enough to speak to of it?

prompt: that’s not how language works.

i have become the literalist that i gazed upon with arrogance
the mirror image of the fundamentalist i raged upon as a child
i deny god by projecting the word—free, playful, imaginative, alive
onto the image of the adult who has given up on their impossible knot
to speak only of truths with names we understand together
the deepest truth is the most vulnerable to name
forgotten, the ones that i know exist only inside me
unspeakable
like the denial of the child
whose best friend just told him santa is not real
what kind of non-existence do you mean?
with what impossibility theorem can she be saved?
with what paradox can love be resurrected after heartbreak?

the gift of uncertainty is the source of my life
when i preserve my uncertainty about your nature
withhold my conclusions about identity
gender, personality, intentionality, goodness, wrongness, expectations
i can see the bounds for your identity grow wider
i know because i can tell when you do this for me
from you, i receive life
the freedom to be surprised
by my word
uncontained by the shell of my image of me
animated by your expectations
that i let bleed into me

your life is a beautiful experiment
so how could i lay my expectations upon you
even my eyes carry too much weight

i wonder
here & now
what will you do?
i wonder
how you will show me