The Body

My Body Can Feel

I went into the sauna and decided I would stay there until I saw god. It was 190 degrees, 12% humidity. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to break for a moment from the surly bonds of the day. The confusion and fear, fatigue at work, competing deadlines, money owed, confusion and vulnerabilities with partner, anger and weariness at the world, our murders, our destructions, our lies, our bullshit discourses, our performances, our collective inability to overcome our collective weakness.

I had cried all week, but I had not told anyone about it because everyone I knew was crying louder and needed more love. I had tried to love people into freedom, I had tried to love myself into freedom. I had failed. My body bore the scars of it. There were aches and tremors, slivers of lightning in my joints, tears in my fabric, holes in my cloth. A writing student asked me to send them my favorite texts about love for a piece they were working on. I promised I would, but for some unknown I reason burst into tears the moment they left the classroom. My pieces were disengaging from their center. It was a reasonable response.

In the sauna I hoped not to come back together but to complete the disengagement. If I’m going to fall apart let me a fall apart all the way to god and all way to the earth and all the way to you. My body was covered in sweat. I felt it on my thighs, caressed it into the curve of my belly. I opened myself all the way up to anything and everything the world had for me.