Most things will haunt you longer than you expect them to

I wasn’t able to turn my hips out for 14 years, and now

I get flashbacks every time I stretch

My yoga mat is a canvas of

I don’t know why he grabbed me

I don’t know if all of those memories are real

I don’t know what to do with my legs anymore

But I do know this

If you point up in the sky, that place goes forever.
That single place that you are pointing at right now can hold everything you need to give it, and I don’t know about you,
but I have so many everythings that I can’t hold them all.

You don’t have to believe in Capital - G - God,
but you have to dress something with your breath,
and you have to refer to that thing as Holy.

There are thousands of things that you can worship in this world from a lucky coin to the sound of wind pushing through bamboo

But I have chosen Her

Her healing touch,

Her smile that explodes through even when she is trying to stay in character,

And yes,

I’m smiling because I’m thinking of Her art-gallery-thighs

I’m thinking of tracing my tongue across her dripping skin and praying to every color that I taste
And I want to give Her every pleasure that I can manage to hold

But all of this terrifying because I don’t know what I can hold
and when I think about sex,
doors are opened in my mind that I cannot close.

And it is so easy for my body to be covered in all of the things that have happened to it
It is so fucking easy for my hips to tighten back up and pray for enough rain to wash away the last decade of touch, but there is never enough rain, and my hips cannot breathe underwater, and I cannot breathe underwater and

Bright hands reach out through the hurricane,
and I can hear Her voice saying,

“Sex is just muscle memory.”

My muscles remember too much,
And so,
I have learned
That to get on my knees for Her,
And I mean, to really get on my knees,

I have to move my legs in ways that they do not yet understand.

Most people have practiced the wrong kind of magic with me,

And so, to worship Her properly,

I have to bend my legs into new spells everyday

I have to point at the sky again and again and ask for more, new, impossible things

I shake myself, and I ask for every breath I take to sanctify my tongue

I thrust myself at clouds and pray for rain to soak me until I am clean just so She can make me dirty again.

And I ask for the pain to stop.
I ask my body to lay itself on the floor,
and I try to stretch the screams out of my hips

I pull all of my everythings out of me and I lay it out on my mat as I stretch my legs again and again

And with each pop, there is a flashback of unwanted hands

With each breathy exclamation of pain, I can see my exe’s eyes staring at me with want and so. much. shame

My body holds more than I believe is possible, but I have to believe in it because it’s right there, and it is screaming

And so

If I have to believe, and I do,

I will believe in sex-saturated sheets

I will believe in ropes and pretty panic attacks and my breathy exclamations of “I trust you. I couldn’t do this with anyone else, but I trust you”

I will believe that each step I take will bring me back to Her, back to me, back to being on my back looking up and only seeing light,

As the spotlight window of our room showers halos across Her body.

Because that’s the trick to all of this

The only real thing is light

So when I do my squats, my stretches, my whatever

I close my eyes, I wait for the inevitable river of black magic that has carried me to this place, and then I search for Her light that rises like a glittering boat from these mean waves

And when I do see it burst into my mind with quiet drums and slow guitars,

I relax my hips, if I can, and I sing Her name, I sing Her name loud, I sing Her name into hallelujah, I sing Her name as I point up into the sky,

And I make sure that all of that forever,

knows just how bright we are