One crack, one river

I live 90% of my life without any skin. The other 10% I wear brass knuckles.
That may be a slight exaggeration, 90% is a lot, but I’m beginning to hold who I am very dear. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: if I were supposed to lead an ordinary life, I wouldn’t have been born a poet. And that’s my truth, my pass for disregarding labels and societal restrictions. It’s helping me accept how beautifully flawed I am, the broken parts of myself that I’ve tried to reconstruct, but now, after all these years sometimes the only way you can recognize the same fox in your yard is by how it limps. And there’s something to be said for a wild thing coming back over and over again. Cautiously, myself and myself understands each other.

I’ve been away and wandering Arizona and California for the past week with a friend; Thelma and Louise style – thank god we never reached the cliff. But we did hike a forest road and sit on the ledge of the Grand Canyon; dangling our feet over the edge, testing our limits and God’s while thunder cracked above us. Where’s the one place you don’t want to be in a lightning storm? On a cliff. And we were there, silently, listening and watching the ravens glide effortlessly on the winds. How can they move so fast while barely moving?
My friend had never seen the Grand Canyon before. It felt like watching someone walk for the first time or fly even. All I keep thinking is how much of a dream this week has been – 7 days full of moments carved from my ordinary, daily life and submerged into me almost like the canyon itself.
When I have no skin, it’s clear how many cracks I have. People are like sandstone that way. Look what one river could do to an entire valley. Look what one person could do to another person: shape and carve; What all our people can do – creating one magnificent flaw in the ground. That’s what the canyon is after all, a flaw, but people from all over the world come to revel on its edge. I’m beginning to see myself this way, or hoping I can, carving my depths and letting those who love me dangle their feet over the ledge and say ahhhhh. Love, as complicated as it is, tells me I’m most beautiful this way.