For the breath of new beginning, the stomach-knotting tension of preparing to leap, how it tightens the best web I can make for landing in. To honor the construction of what is intricately made and yet untested.
For practice protecting the fragile and not-yet-realized: children, the neglected; ancient wisdom and this still-beating heart.
Because when the wind blows a body sideways, sometimes the best way to keep from falling over is by moving with it; because watching a baby learning to walk, not stopping until he hit the next resting place for his hands, or fell down, reminded me of this.
Because sometimes the best I can offer any other life, in an age of senseless killing, visible and invisible, is a living reminder that death doesn’t get the last word.
Because the opening notes of a familiar song are enough to remind me what music can do. Because I refuse to fail for nothing. Because I want each heartbreak to count for something.
Because the decaying bits of once-flowering dreams that died on the vine to fall into this soil have left their bodies in it, the inanimate materials of their still-future lives, and I want to bury these hands in their essence and feel what’s still getting ready to be born.