Woman Alive
And then I suddenly said, it’s good to be alive
and I meant it, not in the way of the reckless
but in the way a ban is lifted and then wrecked.
I said, it’s good to be alive because it is good
and in this offering of myself to you,
I am doused in the familiar,
something warm and soothing. It is merely
caricature to mention fainting
or smelling salts or worse, hyperbole.
I am currently feeling
so much more than the current state
of this horrible world.
It is good to be alive,
because I feel the coming of the tides,
because I feel the frill and the spray
and the shortening and widening of shores
with each of my openings.
If the sharp claws of the tyrant
find their way to my temple,
I am already gone,
in a pulse of beauty,
a stir of honesty,
a dance of both lap and lip and bottom.
I, I, I, I, I am orchestrating this living,
heightening chords, flattening lows,
and sharpening myself into the ambient.
If the giant fangs of the tyrant
find the path to my pulse,
I am already infecting him
with my truth,
that I am ready to fall,
that I have already fallen,
that the falling was a leap I welcomed
and the only time I felt most like myself;
that the melancholy has passed,
that the gray-sea-water, I have been treading,
has sea-foamed and natured itself
into something fresh
and pulsing with organisms.
It is good to be alive under the tyrant,
for he highlights how we should love,
how we can make our own rules
how to remember that life can still surprise us
if we open ourselves to risk,
if we oyster our way out of hate,
and rage and stupor,
haphazardly and sideways,
swollen and pearled
with our pride,
with our pain
with our wants
and muscle ourselves
into willing.
For the only thing
stronger than the tyrant
is the heart.
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