For the Naysayers
I am tired of all the naysayers. Weary of being slighted because I refuse to let go of belief. Conviction. I am tired of being met with censure because I still, to this day, love with a full heart. It has not grown weak under suffering. Less agile. Less willing. The persistent fires unable to put it out. I am not a child. I have not been sheltered from the abuse of tyranny, of hearts that close to others, of minds bent insatiably on power. I am not unfamiliar with sadness in those deepest recesses of my flesh and in my bones. It is true I am small. A fragile frame in the grand vicissitude of rocks and trees and mountains. But a heart may stand tall inside of any flesh, and it need not be the effect of naiveté. Rose-colored glasses or pie in the sky charts of futile dreams. There is a weed that thrusts itself up even in the rockiest areas where no blooms will grow. A fish that glows even in the miles-deep abyss of blackness beneath the temperamental shore. Why are we astounded then, angered even, that love may truly be timeless? Grace eternal? I am tired of walking away from broken bodies accused of being unrealistic, from emptiness still burstingly full. I am weary of men trying to label me ungrounded, as the mad man swiftly grows to be seen as insufferably small. It is not a regression to walk away from hurt still delightful. Again and again still whole. Defiantly present even in the absence. I refuse it. The black and the white. The yes and the no. The never. For me it will always be blue and red and silver and green and shining, wild gold. Forever yes and yes and yes, and then, the eternal. Everywhere. Everything we could possibly hold.
–l.a.w.