Nineteen

We turn nineteen today and I am finding it hard to even fathom how much we’ve transformed together – which sure as hell does not mean that we see or feel the world the same way. 

 

The good thing is that the divine design is drawn up with a box of crayons that have colored our life way outside the borders and binaries we used to believe in. 

 

You steer our wabi sabi balancing act away from a watered-down compromise towards a more radical collaboration that engages the roots of everything we see and feel. 

 I get wide and you go deep. I push through and you drop down. I tell the overstory while you tend the source where no one has the time or energy to go digging, all the way to things in the dark that are deliberately silenced and preferably unheard. 

You tackle the truth in love with your laughter, your tears, your words, your alternative medicine, marching, boycotting, refusing to do the things that “they” say we are supposed to do because “they” are just concerned with protecting their privilege, power, status, success and social respectability. 

I am clear about this – and eternally grateful: you care about Something Else, about collective liberation, about creating a world where Gaza is free, where Flint is unleaded, where DTE doesn’t exist, where covid and corporate greed are cut off, where everyone talks about codependency more than the weather. 

We are far from perfect and perfect for each other. I love you. Let’s do nineteen more.