Not the greeting card version.
Not bubble bath spirituality
with watercolor affirmations taped above the toilet.
The way a pine tree grows around barbed wire
and still reaches skyward
dragging the wound upward into light.
that would have turned softer creatures to salt.
Look at your nervous system.
That electrical cathedral.
Those synaptic highways still firing through storms of memory.
That heart pumping faithfully beneath every betrayal,
every night you nearly mistook exhaustion for failure.
Your body has carried you
through entire eras of collapse.
Still your lungs unzip morning air.
Still your hands reach automatically toward warmth.
Still some animal part of you believes in tomorrow enough
to laugh unexpectedly at videos of raccoons stealing cat food.
Do not overlook the holiness of this.
The universe spent billions of years
forging calcium in dead stars
just to build your teeth.
Ancient oceans rehearsed inside your blood
before your name ever existed.
You are not separate from creation.
wearing a nervous system.
Love the gray hairs arriving like winter frost on fence wire.
Love the stomach softened by living.
Love the strange coping mechanisms slowly becoming wisdom.
Love the younger selves still hiding in your chest
holding broken crayons and unanswered questions.
And when your mind begins sharpening knives against itself again,
when shame enters wearing familiar perfume,
when the old voices start rebuilding cages from memory,
Stand in the center of your own ruin
and speak with the authority of galaxies:
I am worthy of my own tenderness.
Not because I am perfect.
Not because I am enlightened.
Not because I have conquered pain.
is already a staggering miracle.
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
blakekathryn
jacobvanloon
