Life is a gorgeous experiment.
Or, at least, life is an experiment.
Wild and precious and over too soon, Mary Oliver reminds us.
Experiments are messy, indeterminate, unpredictable by their very nature.
Wrought with failure, too.
And so is life.
Aren’t we lucky, then, that some of us – queers, I mean – are practiced in transforming failure into an art form.*
We – we, who are alive –
we who are messy and exhausted
we who are overwhelmed, wrung out, terrified – as everything and everyone we love comes under assault –
we are part of this gorgeous experiment of life.
And here I want to insist on the gorgeousness
because we are gorgeous.
We are heartbroken, and heartbreak healing.
We are hardened, and hardness cracking open, softening.
We are invitations into life lived otherwise.
We are magic, being kindled.
We are dreams, unwilling to be contained.
We are entire prayers, whispered, sung, wailed, received, answered.
We are holy, whole, and wholly deserving of love.
We are hallelujah, amen.
We are divinity, enfleshed.
We are possibilities, emerging.
We are making life livable – everywhere we are making love, making art, making poetry, making song, making shelter, making home – with and for each other.
We are making each other possible.
With and for each other, we become possible.
With and for each other, life becomes possible.
(*See Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure)
Anna Blaedel