Everything is fine. So why am I still crying? Everything is fine…why am I crying?
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I can’t stop screaming-
there is no sound.
everything is not fine.
(why am I crying?)
after all it’s not
my body
being broke,
it’s not
my land
being taken,
it’s not
my children
being murdered.
we are not fine.
I wonder at the mundanit y of life: an argument here, a question there, the fender bender and the taxes are due. Where is it going? Who are we helping? Who are we helping? Is this helping? Am I helping?
or lying, while people are dying
and im my own tiny self-absorbed world
whispering through tears on my cheeks
“I’m fine… so why am I crying?”
why am I tired / frustrated
/ jealous / lonely / scared / sad
/ hurt / lost?
when I am here,
and all the world is there
there is no air, not breathing-
“I can’t breathe.”
I can’t imagine that.
so why am I
here,
and not
there,
why am I sad?
I’m not wrong, or
right.
I am alive and
afraid and
angry.
at the world.
but also at myself.
for being here, instead of there.
angry at bills and old friends,
broken promises and shitty people.
walking this thin-thick line between the world and my own
very simple, very human realness
of a perfectly imperfect life.
I watch the sun from the crass, my head cradled in light. I traverse galaxies in my dreams and defy gravity in the sea, I am nothing if not gloriously, boringly, painfully human.
the world is burning.
it has been burning.
I am not crying for the flames as much as for the ashes, for my own impotence against these fires. No one had to tell me, growing up, that my skin had to be armor and was a target. No one had to tell me that who I loved had to be hidden. No one had to tell me how to move through this world safely. That hasn’t been mine, so are these tears even mine?
I am not fine.
I am not unsafe.
Why am I crying?
Everything is so vivid yet dull. So vast, yet so small. I occupy so little space yet I can feel the whole Universe in my soul. There is so much splendor and too much ugliness. Too much gorgeous love and murder and torture and too much brutal violence and searingly beautiful joy.
where do we hold all of that?
how do we hold all of it?
in our bodies?
How can we be fine, and also not fine at all? How do we survive while dying and thrive while living and be here and also there and everywhere while being nowhere except exactly where we are?
everything is not fine.
Maybe the real question is not,
“why am I crying?”
It is actually,
“how could you possibly not be?”