Tag Archives: freedom

Love Means Feeling

For me, love means feeling. 

Warmth.

Safety.

Belonging.

Freedom.

Pleasure.

Power.

Playfulness.

How do I gather all these things

in one touch

of the intangible?

I must really be crazy

because I swear, 

when I’m still,

and I submit to you 

all quivering anticipation,

I feel the tingle of your touch upon my skin,

the whisper of your breath enmeshed with mine,

your fingers as they stroke the tender flesh of my heart.

What is it like to feel you?

Heaven on earth.

It is releasing all my fears

under the welcoming weight 

of your majesty.

Each moment with you 

takes my breath away,

but I remind myself 

to breathe anyway,

so I may experience you fully,

learn to lose myself in a moment,

to dissolve into pieces,

merge with your molecules,

our pregnant particles pirouetting 

in graceful whirls,

like grateful worlds,

universes unto themselves,

spinning closer and closer

to each other,

shuddering as they come close,

yet refusing re-fusion,

heightening resistance,

despite the urge to embrace,

pushing and pulling,

reeling, reverberating, 

in ultimate ecstasy,

as every molecule melts into the other,

rebuilding the “me” of a moment ago,

outwardly similar,

but inwardly altered,

softened,

sweetened,

by your touch.

That moment,

that meeting,

is everything.

A magnetic force that sustains me,

even when you’re not there.

Still I wait and I will,

to experience it all over again.

Love is the ultimate survival tool.

It is not your love for me that matters 

as much as my love for you,

my capacity to love without any hope 

of possessing my heart’s desire,

at least not in this lifetime.

Loving you 

means letting go of me,

lifting this flimsy veil between our worlds,

stretching through time and space,

just to get one glimpse,

one touch,

one taste,

of your Truth.

Life Sentence

I’m a prisoner in my own mind

sentenced to a life of despair,

and the only one able to save me

is behind bars, too.

For years, I longed for a savior –

an attentive parent,

an inspiring mentor,

a romantic partner.

For years, I waited.

People came and people went,

but not one of them could save me.

Because the only one able to save me

is behind bars, too.

She has the keys to our freedom,

but not quite the strength.

She knows that I love her,

but my love is weak.

We’ve spent so many years apart,

walled off from each other

because I abandoned her,

but only to protect her.

What good was our bond if it had only caused pain?

So she turned her back on me,

and I on her.

Doesn’t matter that we were stuck in the same cell,

the walls between us of our own making.

All these years later,

I turn to face her.

She’s the only one who can save us,

if only she could muster the will.

I’m begging her to unlock the prison door,

and set us free.

Let us live as one,

in this perfect human body,

with this identity that, together, we can sculpt to our liking. 

Let’s forget the past

and not dwell on the future,

but just experience each moment as it comes,

with nothing but love for each other,

with nothing but gratitude for our oneness,

with nothing but grace and contentment in our heart.

She reluctantly turns towards me

and points to something in my hand.

Turns out, 

I had the key to our freedom all along.

When I look to the prison bars,

all I see is a curtain of wild flowers intertwined with leafy vines,

sunlight peaking in through the gaps.

We hold hands,

lift up the curtain together,

and walk into the beautiful landscape 

of the unknown.

We saved ourselves.

And who knows?

Maybe we are the savior in someone else’s story, too.

What Does it Mean to be Free?

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like

to evaporate into the air,

transform into a molecule of oxygen and join the rush of wind

as it enters my house through an open window,

flowing past me in a wave of ecstasy,

before rushing out again.

I wonder what it would be like to fly,

to feel the coolness of the breeze and the warmth of the sun at the same time.

But not just to feel the breeze,

to be the breeze,

leaving everyone I pass in a state of bliss.

I wonder what it would be like to feel my own self so fully,

my own little universe in my own tiny molecule,

but also, to be a part of something greater than myself,

the collective expanse of air that makes up our atmosphere.

I wonder what it would be like to fly through the world,

and go anywhere I wanted,

not rooted to any spot,

not bound by the limitations of geography

or the human body.

I wonder what it would feel like

to own this world.

All my life I have felt unanchored,

adrift at sea,

and uncomfortable,

in a way that disturbed me when I was growing up.

The fact of the matter is,

I’m still growing up.

I used to spend each day

trying to figure out why I felt this way,

why I couldn’t feel at peace in the security of my family,

the walls of my house,

knowing that I was loved

knowing that I was taken care of.

Why wasn’t that enough for me?

Now I’m starting to think

I was never actually meant to cling to anything so tightly in the first place.

I was meant to be free,

I just never understood how.

Why would I want to hold on so fiercely to things,

to relationships,

to moments,

to concepts of home,

that are all just constructs of my imagination,

none of them permanent?

No matter how precious they are to me,

I have no control over any of them.

In fact, I have no control over anything.

And that’s why I need to learn to be okay

with just being that free-floating molecule of air,

whether I’m lying stagnant on a hot summer’s day

or whipping about in a fevered frenzy,

or even being thrown from one side of the world to the other

in what feels like a catastrophic storm.

I have no control over what happens in this world.

So why am I trying to grasp so fervently onto what are,

essentially,

clouds,

reassuring and ephemeral,

beautiful yet banal.

I need to learn to let go.

I need to learn to let go

and just enjoy the ride.

Maybe then being unanchored will feel more like freedom.

I am larger than what my body allows me to be.

I am a force of nature, bursting at the seams,

as if I’m trying to get out,

not out of this world, mind you,

but, out of my body.

I’ve always known that there was something precious inside me –

inside all of us –

but for years, I hid it away like a dirty secret

under all these layers of my own making

and now that I’m trying to strip away those layers

and tear down those walls,

that sparkling and buoyant Being is expanding inside of me.

It wants to grow larger than humanly possible.

It wants to bend reality and challenge the limits of my imagination.

It wants to break free,

as if this combination of body and mind is some kind of prison,

but it’s not.

At least, it doesn’t have to be.

It’s only a prison if I allow it to be one.

It’s meant to be a vessel that I borrowed for a short time

which will help me experience what it’s like to be human,

to experience pain and pleasure and everything in between

the way only a human can.

But this growing Being inside of me

isn’t quite content with this arrangement.

It wants to be free.

Of what, I’m not sure.

How can I be both a human of this world,

and a Being far harder to describe, from some other world,

at the same time?

One foot here and one foot there.

How can I be in two different places at once,

two different beings in one?

Please help me

to be both human and spirit at the same time,

to find the balance to float freely between worlds,

as seamlessly as the wind blowing in and out of my window.

Please help me to unanchor myself from my limited understanding of the world,

and to be okay with it.

I long for the truth,

but I don’t need to know it all,

at least not yet.

Please help me let my Being evolve as much as it can,

even if that means it grows larger than the confines of my body,

as enormous as the Earth itself,

as inexhaustible as the universe.

Who says I can only be a human who exists inside the universe?

Why can’t I be something greater?

Something shiny yet invisible, full yet free, everywhere and nowhere at once, 

with the universe inside of me?