communion

communion

for you

i want a life of touching

being touched

the way you want

i want a life of touching

being held

the way you want

to hold somebody

being held

full of the reasons

to hold somebody

free

full of the reasons

sunshine laughter

free

communion

sunshine laughter

being touched

communion

for you

What is touch? What is my father thinking as he watches me reach out to touch another baby. An Anguillian age-mate with whom I have not kept in touch. I wonder. Where is my friend? How is my friend of that moment feeling in this moment. Where is my father? Where is the one who even now holds me up so that I feel safe enough to reach out with these words. Where was he then? What is it like for a person socialized to be a man in a society structured by sexual violence to imagine, reimagine what touch could mean in the life of his daughter? What is my friend’s mother thinking as I reach and she studies her child’s response? What is it for all of us right now to reimagine, reinvent touch after a year of deprivation? Is there something that we learn by not touching the living that recasts our longing to touch our loved ones who have died? Is there something we learn by not having access to touch with our loved ones who have passed on that prepared us for this moment of reach? I don’t know. I do know that I want a world where touch is communion. Not the taken for granted invasion of my personal space as a small femme Black person embodied. But also not this isolation where touch feels impossibly deferred. I want a coming back together differently. Communion. Where the many ways we touch each other, physically, and with our decisions, and what we decide to share and not share and how we listen or do not listen to each other deeply is all reclaimed by communion. Our desire to be together simply different from our fear of what it means to be alone. Communion. Our loving acknowledgement of how our lives all touch each other anyway, our commitment to unlearning the violent ricochet of ignoring our inherent interdependence. Communion, a ceremony. Finding it. A ceremony of noticing how we are touching each other. A ceremony of finding enough safety to notice. To change. To reach. To respond.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.