I’ve been training myself to see lack as an additive. Extra sauce on the side. When I feel the cavernous void of lack and start to tremble at the screams of “you’re not enough, you weren’t then, you’ll never be” I ask myself “who am I without this lack?” Then I walk around the block naming as many vegetables as I can.
Who am I? Am I the story I sung myself to sleep with when I was thirteen? Am I how much they love me or how little they care? Am I the backhanded thing I said last month? On January 26th I could see Mars from Manhattan. I laid on the roof. I am none of those things.
Nature is regenerative. For how many billions of years? It bows with reverence to the seasons, bending with the changes. It needs not winter to be summer. I once perceived a deprivation of love in my life. Now I ask who was I without that lack of love? And I see that even then, I was whole. Complete.
Nevada State Route 169 weaves through the Moapa Valley. I’m driving wherever it may lead me. I begin to weep without knowing why. I hear a voice that says “forgive me.” All is. Forgiven. As if it were never stained with anyone’s blood. And so you were free to bleed and I am free to remember you for who you were, which was enough, though you did not believe it.
