Everything speaks

New year's resolution

Sometimes I close my eyes halfway—just enough for light to touch me, and just enough to have the ground beneath me hold my imagination for a moment. On 14th St. near the pier, I can imagine the cobblestones I’m walking on to be the ones I’ve walked on in Prague four years ago. Downtown Brooklyn becomes London. That one road from East Williamsburg to Prospect Park becomes the roads in Richmond. Sometimes reality feels like whatever I will it to be.

I think about the trees that danced for me five winters ago, on the highway leaving Philadelphia, a couple minutes past sunrise. I think about the water boiling in my pot, bubbling to the surface to speak to me. I think about the jackfruit seeds my mom roasts for my dad, and how I let the sink run a bit longer that evening. I think about the cricket between my two fingers, beneath the cloth of my rust-brown skirt.

I think about what it means to be alive—to live—to feel like the world speaks back if I only listen. The sensation of feeling, the coarseness of the air, brushes against my skin and gives shape to my body. I exist!

In my solitude, the earth’s drums, the strings of the river, and the hum of the trees—they settle into the crescent of my ear. I can see the child’s little belly.

I wish to know I exist—that everything’s alive—even in company.