-

Despair is most dangerous in survival situations, even more so

than panic, or overconfidence. Despair saps the will to live.

[Backpacker magazine]

-

me: what is your favorite thing about your face?

woman: the fact that it heals.

-

-

One day I will be thirty. I will also be camping. I will be eating over a fire, spent and in love, and think irrationally of fashion models.

-

When I was younger, I craved this perfection, the even, hairless skin, the thin limbs, the wide mouths. Their bodies were invitations, altars. Mine was a story with a rough beginning and an even more uncertain ending, always a length away from me, always under critical observation, like a stranger who is unknowingly sitting at my favorite table in a deli.

-

Now I see. I see how I cannot live without her, and more, how I cannot Live without her. My legs like pillars, flexing when I run, collapsing gracefully when I need to touch the ground. They hold me up, bone and sinew, breaking only under extreme violence, and then healing stronger than they began. My feet walk the whole earth over, testing for purchase. From the moment I first stood I have both ignored them completely and trusted them more than anything else I know.

-

I will splay on the ground and boil water for tea, and remember when I used to think all I wanted was to look strong and beautiful. Now I am strong and beautiful, something I never expected, and the difference makes me laugh, and it also fills me with sorrow. I'm sorry, I will tell myself. You are no disappointment, but the temple of a ghost both strange and holy. You are earth with breath, the mystery of a soul walking in dust. Fashion magazines are irreverent, their editors and contributors heretics, I will conclude as I fall asleep under the sky, pillowed by my hair, warmed by my blood.