We come from darkness. We come from the earth.
And it’s where we’ve been heading since the moment of birth.
Escape is in our nature. We struggle from the womb, riding the waves of contractions to our first taste of air. The sunlight helps us grow stronger and taller and farther away.
charcoal and pastel
But our feet were built to stay on the earth, toes curling into the soil like roots. Sturdy legs to bare the weight of a lifetime, standing like stalks, building at the pace of cellular growth.
We look upward into the blue and we dream, and the light above, though beautiful, blinds us.
What we can’t see is that we have never left our holes.
Arms flail. Hands grasp. We stretch our bodies upward like contortionists toward a place high above where only the eye can go. Where only the mind can go. Where only the soul can go.
Hush little baby don’t say a word,
Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
Let her assure you, this woman who held you deep inside, that this hole need not be your grave. You are not the rot and decay that they will find there. You are above. Shot out like a flock of larks into the morning light.
These birds have the right idea—dream it, and it is so.
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