I feel brattiest in how often I forget to admire
I am trying, vigilantly, to Problematize and to Be Needed.
selfish me, even this dedicated poem is about myself.
Lu, Selfless is a thing you are that I am not.
Lu says, publicly, that she likes what I do
and she uses this word
inspires
that I just straight out forget about
to be a person who yearns to make nonprgamatic things
(as pragmatically as possible)
and to forget the word inspires!
this is an insanity that I falsely think makes me tough.
Lu says she has been watching me work this week
this week I am the crunchy girl doing the eco-thing so publicly
this week I am wrestling quietly with the impossibility of consciousness shifting
as something done in one push, by a visitor, or something done en masse.
It is painful, what change is not ready to be made.
I whine all week that this feels thankless, like no one is watching
but when I get what I say I am craving I feel wriggly
why aren't you loving me by stepping up to say what I did wrong?
Lu doesn't do that,
she is smiling and honoring and saying,
the way you should respect me first is by how graciously I treat you.
She embodies this dignity so deeply I almost forget to stop and look at the work she is doing,
she is organizing young people too,
and she is singing to them and supporting them, quietly. one at a time.
She is so good at this job that I could never do.
Participating fully without taking up any of the space that we are saving for the youth to shine,
she steps forward only when modeling stepping and I say, damn there is someone
who commands badass space with her gentleness and love.
There is someone who is girly but not saccharine, who is tough but not aggressive, who is strong but not mean.
you don't need to do this thing, friend, my ego doesn't need it.
What strikes me is not the nice things you write,
but how tuned in one must be
to make space to just take what's good from what you see, and to just honor openly.
and that is what you do.
