Day 21: Sustenance
need & longing
Friends,
Happy Tuesday!
Today’s word is sustenance, and before we get straight to that, I want to remind you that Summer’s Magic comes out in ONE WEEK!
One week until you get to meet Bo, celebrating his culture and relationship with Mother Earth alongside him! Please make sure you’ve pre-ordered the book. It means so much to us as authors when our readers signal to the publishing world that our books are necessary and valued, and preorders help with that.
Now, onto the poetry:
I pause and ask myself what sustenance is, what I really need in order to keep going. Yes, the food and the water, yes the love and care, yes, the wells of knowledge, yes, tenderness, yes, kinship and flourishing, yes, words. I know what I have now, what I haven’t had before, what others might not have, and what they should be given every single second of every single day. So, sustenance is a prayer, of both gratitude and longing, that some have what they need and yet the world has so many needs and it’s all true, all at once, and our hearts, hands and feet mark the spaces between all of it.
Sometimes the most radical thing a woman can do is listen to her own heart and meet her own needs.
This poem came spilling out of me last night as I was fixing dinner, contemplating an upcoming solo trip I'm taking and how others have looked at me when I told them, the little barbed comments they have said.
I've come to believe that when someone hisses, "It must be nice..." with such venom, it is their own repressed yearnings begging to be acknowledged, their heart genuinely longing for that thing that "must be nice."
How Dare She
How dare she take time for herself.
It’s not for work or family?
For herself?
How dare she go away for a week
to think
and write
and be still.
What about her children and husband?
What will they do without her?
Who will be there to cook their meals,
wash their dishes,
and pick up their dirty socks that all over the floor?
What right does she have to be independent?
To be free
for a time.
The audacity.
Sustain
More than livelihood,
sustenance is life-li-hood —
finding our true place
in the (neighbor)hood
of existence.
What is it,
physically, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually,
that will support
and accompany us
throughout our journey,
in hopeful, helpful ways?
For me, it’s been
other people fluent
in the laying on of ears,
who aren’t repelled
by a creek of tears,
and not separated
with a fog of fears.
How ‘bout you?