Proof of life…
…is ice cream. And hot and cakey pudding with a gooey viscous sauce. And the sight of a long and desperately aching string of cheese pulling from that slice of pizza as you urge it to your plate. It is satiation, and the commitment to living a full-scoop life with no holding back and no waving off home plate. All in, all flavors. Sweetness, two-stepping on a tongue, writhing in hopped-up ecstasy on a tastebud tabletop. It is accepting the evidence of ice cream as it holds up a newspaper with today’s date to the unfocused lens of your doubt. The headline reads: Where boldness strides, sweetness follows.
…is an unbridled laugh bolting from the barn of a friend’s open mouth. The tone of delightful surprise, tickled and cuddled by the relaxed and reliable humor of you. Your no-laugh-track-required friendship. It is the love song sewn into the hem of your collective garments and broadcast in stereo during autumnal BBQs and coffee catchups and impromptu kickbacks on porches in summer. A relationship breathing in the space of a casual landscape, snaking through the hollows and gullies before exhaling with a soft sigh that whispers: “I exist. I am here. We are together.”
…is the sun running its hand down your back leaving a trail of warmth that relaxes the spine to calm submission. It is the wind eking out a crisp tear from your eye, not from sadness or from grief, but from the spring of ancient memory and a body functioning as designed. It is the lost fingertip sensation from fast, gloveless descents on your bicycle, followed by arms crossed and hands stuffed in armpits seeking the space heater of your own biology. A shiver, a shake—you are a generator of sublime energy, powering the city and suburbs and outlying farmland of your world. A self-perpetuating spirit on a cosmic scale, weighed by no one, answering only to history.
…the crack of knees upon rising from a couch and the awkward stagger-dance thereafter until equilibrium is achieved. The suck of time through an hourglass you rent and continue to shake with force, passion, and vigor, knowing you will never get the deposit back. Being fine with it and shaking it even harder. Walking to the edge with it held in your hands, curious as to where the actual edge is. Checking the drop. Dangling time from the precipice before turning back. Back, toward the ice cream.
…it is being thrown sideways by kindness and time-warped to childhood by bars of a birthday song sung by strangers who do not know your name. It is knowing that not everyone sings that same, bright song and that words are not always musical. That words in general can be arranged and composed in a wrong and hateful order by some, and that the proof of your humanity will be to still believe our whole story will be better than the broken sentences and paragraphs of their screeds. They will always hold your optimism to ransom, but it is not a weakness to let hope live within the cells, bones, and brain of your being. To trust in the richness of the bigger picture even as they are sullying the frame.
So.
Look to the ice cream.
Pay no ransoms and meet no outrageous demands, for where boldness strides sweetness follows. (And remember: proof of life is always full fat.)
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
I don’t care what people think of my poetry so long as they award it prizes.
- Robert Frost, from letter to Harriet Monroe, 4th November 1922
Via Letters of Note
On Rotation: “The Ballad of Crowfoot” by Willie Dunn
I had never heard of him, but The Ballad of Crowfoot came on my Spotify discovery and I knew I had to get myself a Willie Dunn record and learn about a new (to me) artist. Matches my listening station…
This is so good. Mr. Doodle’s Doodle House.
I didn’t think I’d laugh so much at that. But I did. I am a simple gal.