day 14: sweat
a poem a day in the month of may
Today’s word is sweat, and we are still exploring so many words related to nature/Mother Earth/bodies, and yes, how our bodies are connected to the Earth.
I hope as you write and explore this, you feel yourself drawn to her, to Earth, our Mother, in new ways. I hope that the poetry you’re writing is bringing you home.
Sweat
I learned to sweat
when I learned
to move my
body
to let it
change
its own story.
I learned to sweat
on a Peloton
bike while a
woman on the
screen basically
became my therapist.
She told me I
could sweat
and move
and heal myself,
so I kept sweating,
and kept healing,
and kept moving,
and I don’t know
where I’d be now
if I hadn’t decided
I needed to know
what it feels like
to be a little
more myself in
a way I couldn’t
quite understand.
Turns out,
sweat is a pretty
powerful way
to come home.
Day Fourteen: Sweat
a poem a day in the month of may
(The Liminality Journal: Kaitlin Curtice)
Sweat: smelly and wet,
We apologize, hide it.
Yet — Life hard-earned.
***
Wash it off,
cover it up,
close those pores
with unfortunate chemicals.
Sorry, we say,
I’m dripping wet,
we say.
Don’t get too close!,
we say.
Here it is.
Life.
Hard work.
We stretch our muscles,
birth a baby,
till a garden.
Sometimes
the sweat on our brow
Is the price of words
that will not come,
an apology
long overdue,
an unspoken grief,
now gushing forth unchecked.
The work of our life,
this life,
is not meant
to be easy.
sweat was always the marker of
hard work and grit and
beating myself to a pulp
but could it be
sweat is a caretaker
regulating this home I embody
with salt and water
(what a sweet kindness)
maybe it is not about hard work
but the ease with which my body
restores me to harmony