The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Dear Universe...

Dearest Universe,

I've been slowly waking up to you. I've become more and more aware of your power over the humans who think they own you, and I get why you throw the odd tsunami or hurricane our way. This is your way of telling us to take a seat, sit down self-important, wallowing humans, be grateful for the air and the water and the days of good weather which always outnumber the bad.

Sweet universe, I cannot help my obsessions. I am a human, and as such, I am flawed and compulsive. I want to roll around in the sun rays of a springtime afternoon but I cannot because the threat of human laws and expectations are always more pressing than the possibility of you opening up the earth and sucking us in. I cannot live on my love of rolling waves by the seashore. I cannot manage by sitting on a mountaintop and looking at the earth around me. We've mucked it all up, you see. We've created a world in which the only thing we seem to respect and observe is money and each person's worth/status in relation to it. It gets me down, though. It makes me feel incomplete, my lack of purpose and subsequent lack of monetary assets. I am nothing, cherished universe. I am nothing much at all.

But, they say you give back what is sent to you, that you drink in the blackness and spit it back at those who pushed it your way. You've spit on me a little, universe, but I know I had it coming. I can be a little maudlin, a little bit woeful, and while it always feels comfortable, in a very strange way, I know it's not the way to get what I think I want.

I do think I'm a decent person, after all. I don't steal, I seldom kill (bugs, mosquitoes more specifically, I tend to crush them without thinking and I seldom feel remorse), I've never coveted a neighbour's wife (I'm not into that, universe, but I've lusted for a husband or two). The point is that I'm one of the millions of faces of benign and nameless people. I am someone who is seldom remembered when I walk down the street, my name lost somewhere between the tip of the tongue and the back of the throat. I am no threat. I do not hurt with intention.

I'm putting it out there that I deserve happiness, universe. I deserve it as much as anyone, and I want you to know it. I am pushing out the belief that I am worthy of love and contentment through my mouth and nose, the heat of me riding on the waves of your own exhalations. Universe, I have been wrapped up in an itchy blanket for too long, and I'm weary of all the prickly sleep. What I need is for you to believe in me, to make me a goddess in your own small religion. If I plant the seeds I need you to warm them, so that they will grow, coming to flower.

Do I love myself, universe? I'm starting to. I love the way I feel when I look at my man, my girl and my felines. I am beginning to accept that I can be different than others, that I am too controlling and a bit of a ramrod perfectionist. I love myself for occasionally bursting with frustration over the injustices I don't understand, for the way I will read a poem four times and still not understand it, for the sweet potatoes I burned that my man ate with gusto, for the cake I made that came out fluffy, gold and light, for the books I start and don't always finish, for the way I use sarcasm to evoke laughter, the tears I cried in shame when I hurt someone I loved, the almost sexual delight I get from eating a Snickers bar, and for the way I tend to come out of my darkest moments in a sudden burst of light. I can talk too much, prattle really, becoming breathless and agitated with each, quick word, but it's what makes me who I am. I sometimes snort when I laugh, and I can't walk in heels, and I almost always fall in love with music about ten years after it first made its appearance (I spent all day yesterday listening to No Doubt, universe, a band I loathed in '95. I cannot explain it). That I hurt so easily means I'm feeling, and I love that. My vices are small and uninfectious, I prefer feeling beautiful to plain, and I don't want to be a carnivore, anymore. I wish more people liked me the way I like myself, and sometimes I allow my perceptions to be twisted by their inability to see what's here, but here, away from them, I know that they're the ones with the clouded vision. I like myself even when the forty-somethings in computer class look away from me and exclude me from their silly conversation. I like myself when I get a review on my poetry that tells me I should maybe take up painting. I like myself when I make him smile, when I hear her tell me she loves me, when the cats rub against my legs.

Universe, I am putting it all out into you with the hope that you will believe me and send it back again.