Stop Writing

Today’s draft is one of the most vulnerable kinds of drafts for me to share — a piece of writing about writing. I feel like it’s so easy to get lost in concepts and theory, and to lose the Loving attention to detail that, for me, makes a poem happen. I tried to ground this one in solid things — success still to be determined.

Stop writing about your breath.

It will happen whether you capture it in words or not.

All those metaphors are made of paper anyway. 

Your exhale blows them away. 

What I mean is, stop writing about your breath,

Start breathing it.

Stop writing about your body,

its soft post-menopausal folds, 

its surprising toughness.

And, for the love of god —

Do not write another word about your hair,

especially not about the white enfolding your head like snow on the mountains

bringing a stately quiet to what was, for so long,

dyed, ignored, or fetishized.

Stop writing about the shape of your hips,

how it feels to dance inside that warm bowl of flesh.

You have it backwards.

A body, the body, your body, my body

is the portal to the words.

Not the other way around.

Find your phone.

(Only to find your music.)

Put on the Syncopation playlist,

and go shake what your momma, time, and

a life well-lived have given you.

What I mean is, stop writing about your body,

Go live in it.