most mornings i wake up, and my body is already gripping.
The canine teeth
on the left side of my jaw firmly clenched
to a thread they must not release.
my left hand clocks in later that morning
i find it balled up into a fist
regularly throughout the day
when we are in very tense situations
my throat joins the struggle too,
and my vocal cords and neck muscles
contract, clinging to safety.
the threads we hold on to are thin but strong,
we have learned to trust them and
whatever it is that they are attached to
though we have never seen their source
we are a fluttering cloth
sewed to strings that attach to… maybe nothing.
we become conscious everyday to release the threads.
some days we release and fall
and the rest is delicious
we lay languidly free in a hammock of liberation
and we look down below the canopy that has caught us
and laugh, because we are still so high up
there are so many levels of release we can only dream
of reaching before we can lay naked,
snuggling the brown soil of our mothers body
what would it feel like to free fall?
how deep will we go?
Andrea Atkinson
Andrea Atkinson directs One Square World, supporting community-led processes towards equity and sustainability. She has a degree in International Relations with a focus on sustainable development in Latin America and Africa from Boston University and a graduate certificate in environmental management from Tufts University. Andrea is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program.
