Wild Writing 7/100

Leave everything you know behind

But, to be honest, that’s not that much

You’ve forgotten all phone numbers and previous addresses

You definitely forget how to spell

You don’t remember life before a phone in hand or earbuds in ears

What was it like to just sit on the porch and watch birds?

Give me the rolling waves of the ocean

without the urge to film it or share it or make it mean something

Can we just be?

Try it with me.

Listen closely to the sound of my voice

and marvel at how vibrating cords of tendons

in my throat channel sound into air and

those waves are coming at you

and the hairs on your ears and the drum in your ear

pick up those rattlings and somehow, someway, your brain says:

HUMAN VOICE + JUSTINE’S + ENGLISH +

“SALAMI SANDWICH WITH MAYO”

How is it that this entire circuit of relationship exchange doesn’t leave us astonished at how the world works?

I would love to leave everything I know behind every goddamn minute

Because otherwise I am just an ego,

fighting and freezing up in my body

trying to be bigger / stronger / righter and so I end up missing things

like the trembling of her hands or the fear in her voice.

Who?

I don’t know.

Anyone.

Everyone.

(Prompt is from David Whyte’s poem Tilicho Lake. I am creating a timed piece of wild writing every day for 100 days for this year’s 100 Day Project.)