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Love in the era of “woke culture” is a paradox of wins.

You cannot spiritually gaslight the heart; you must first
assess the fight or flight, you must first understand the soul of twins.
You see, he never asked me to marry him;
it was a mosaic of “why nots” but in the cosmic scheme
there are no accidents—I am a firm believer in that.

My DNA changed with his first touch,
and memories of a million years ago lay at his feet.
But truth is, it was the perfect storm of
serendipitous encounters. Not your average meet-and-greet.
The housing lady told someone we were engaged,
and within hours, the fleet of perfect strangers.
Piano anthems played. He looked at me, “Why not?”

A hundred pounds of me felt like the “why not”
of leftover fathers and mothers, mashed potatoes
and gravy, everything that was more important than me.
The “why not” was the theme of underwhelm, which
in dark closets not one person could fill. Ghosted.
I was the person people loved in private.
That was my understanding. Roasted.

My memory of Princess Diana, childhood books, kinship,
the loneliness as she trembled down the aisle, white lace.
She was adored by the world; she was here for the world.
But did you feel the sadness on her face?
Her prince, to love and be loved, on a distant shore.
He also wasn’t aware of the armor
around his heart, the armor which inevitably kept them apart.

Perhaps my fairy tale began there,
and with the French priest who couldn’t pronounce my name;
Marseille, the makeup of Queens, the lace from my train
soiled by the rain, and I felt regal—bisous a tout le monde.
Cat-ya this and Cat-ya that. “Je te don cet alliance,” he
knew that the bouquet I set at the Virgin Mary’s feet
was, in fact, my first defeat.

I have friends who in their mid-30s do not want children
because their identity as a beautiful woman is tied up
in the umbilical cord of perfection.
Strangely, this never occurred to me. Perhaps it should have.
The babies within me were the reason the best me came to be.
After 52 hours of labor, and sleepless nights,
I found him, office enclosed, watching the women of the night,
the nurses of his plight. Healing a need within him, am I not right?

How can I describe the stone that sank to the
bottom of the ocean?
My ability to be everything to him drifted in slow motion.
How can I describe the poison of that potion?
Murky waters ink-welled the deep blue, knowing
I had to share something I didn’t have.
I went into emotional debt, in the piggy bank of mourning.

A new dawn, wondering how do the “woke” share
the beauty and love? No, possession isn’t love—
but how can you share what you do not have?
I dried myself off from an eternity of fears; I shed the skin
of my youngest self and my best years.
And like the mermaid of a new tale, I emerged
the queen of dragons of this land, my limbs resiliently
disguised, fed to the breeze, covered in sand.

I became my own army in the “woke culture” war,
the poster child for free child, non-possessive galore.
But when the waves came crashing in, and the world saw me
in all manner of sins,
I sat with myself and the sea of misunderstanding.
I came to feel the war of the world and demanded
that I am not woke if woke means denying.
I am not awake if my heart is dying.

I am here to be seen, not covered in sheen,
not sharing a heart in a heartless machine.
I am LOVE with the capital letters;
I am LOVE for worse and for better.

I worry that the children of this generation
will look at porn as the peak of perfection.
They might not know the softness of a true caress,
will they even know the perfection of imperfect breasts?
Will they learn that sex is the intimacy of souls?
Will they learn the importance of the eye gaze transposed?

How can they exchange energy with the sun,
how can they learn how to become truly one?
For me, it came in a dream.
The wellspring of creation knew the potential within me.
In French they call us les femme fountaines, but really
this is more than the source of life, this is the notion
that there isn’t a potion for this kind of devotion.

Two positive charges without a spark;
the divine feminine within me isn’t a show,
it’s for the ceremonious union of love—it is a boon sent from above.
This power can give seizures, it’s not for leisure.
It is to be bottled and stored, and only released when she is crowned and adored.
All of this is now on a shelf, sleepy, sedated to words misspoke,
watching the world unravel and repair, watching the sea and the veil reappear.

What I do know is that my soul is not tired;
I do know that I am just not wired to be asleep on a desert island,
miles away—a princess, a tale; fierce, loving, vulnerable, peace.
“Woke,” in the current sense of the word, for me feels so absurd.
I am here to simply experience the truth of this world. Sleep.
Your emotional intelligence I feel from miles away. Weep.
I am here for the wise, I am not here to play. Keep.

~