by David Banach
I want to talk about bodies, your body, my body, the way bodies make
themselves pulling cells together without hands or mind; dimples, curls
proportioned line of leg are all just forms of self-organizing things; the way
they come to be in other bodies, using them, eating them up; the way
we grow in wombs, suckling, grasping, needing help, and helping you up
and hungering, tending wounds and wounding, entering and being entered,
the way our naked need, and gaping open weak and tender flesh brings us
to communion
When I lift my daughter for bed, she cries, “Daddy you took my body.”
We rebel at being just a thing, bodies pushed, pulled, poked, and strapped down.
She will run through fields arms all akimbo, roll down grassy slopes to feel
the pull of gravity, rush of wind, all the thrill of being body.
There is horror in being held down, as certain as comfort at being held;
the vulnerability of the cheek to caress creates the sting of the slap.
The contrary of bondage is not power, but just this weakness of love.