On Empathy

June 24, 2022

Today I look up, the sky so clear
it seems as if it goes on forever,
which it does. It’s me, really,
that stops. My brain can’t hold
infinity in it. I am confined
by the experience of being
in this body, a realm defined
by its boundaries, by its relative
celestial smallness. I witness
the sky arc above me like a spine,
but its blueness is not embodied,
has never known a bone, never
known the way a pelvis can split
as my mother’s did, the pedestal
of her waist displaced by the force
of birth. I don’t know what it is like
to inhabit anyone else’s body,
but I can imagine, the same way
I can imagine forever, though it exists
outside of me. I am asking you
to imagine my body, the tired fear
it lives beneath each day,
ordinary as groceries, as gravity.
I am asking you to imagine
my body and to do nothing to it,
to only let it experience lightness.