I haven’t been able to write this week.
I’ve been unraveling from the edges that brush against the world.
The softness falls away, and I am a skeleton of splintered glass.
Balancing fractured surfaces upright.
I took a course once on trauma and movement and the instructor said something that shifted my perspective. Drama teachers I’ve had, and have worked with use a standard image during warm-up sequences: “Now roll up: one vertebra at a time. Stacking one on top of the other.”
An upright stack of bones being pulled toward the earth.
But the body doesn’t work that way. You cannot stack a skeleton. Not in death. Not in life.
We are suspension bridges.
I think about this image a lot. I come back to it when I feel heavy in the world. We are animated by opposing tensions. Naturally pulled in varying directions as we go about our days. It opens us. Our ribs open and lift like wings when we breathe.
Life needn’t be
a fight against gravity
a balancing act
precarious brain-on-bone-
on-bone afraid of breathing
We can choose to fly
whisper in each other’s ear
I’m going to lift you
now like a dancer come running
trust I’ve got you even from here
Ren Powell, Poet | Playwright | Teaching Artist 
What’s your perspective?