Love as Activism

Today marks the fifth anniversary of my Nonna’s passing. My tummy has been in knots all day. My guts toiled in memories. Today is the last exam for my daughter; her eleventh grade year concluded. Today my son will attend a funeral for a classmate; a bright, compassionate, kind light of a human who passed in his sleep. Today, bombs continue to drop. Today, disease expands in bodies. Today, heat wraps the afternoon like a shadow. My throat is tight blue – I hold tears there because weeping feels weak.

What if my activism is to love the tiniest thing? That in a single tear unfolding from the corner of a single eye…grief has a home that welcomes everyone? What if an embrace is a whooshing wind of peace?

The depth of my sadness is galactic, yet held in the determined chambers of my beating heart – alive and insisting on living at all costs. Like your heart. Like every human heart.

What if a poem is agency? Advocacy? Anarchy? Proof of the availability for peace when Love is the language?

As the mourning continues for my Nonna, for a young man turned angel, for deaths near and far, internal and external, literal and metaphorical – I deny the narrative that weeping is weak, that hope is useless, that Love is not enough.

I choose to be “the kind of “wound that turns into a lung through which you breathe,”” – as written by Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994).

I choose to inhale and exhale love. Small gasps. Deep inhales. Tight-lipped exhales. Gargantuan yells that vibrate the stars…Wishful whispers that fill thimbles…all is breath. All is love.