Receiving

According to census

On November 8, 2021

At 1:21PM Pacific Standard time

There were 7,801,470,370 people on Planet Earth

.

That’s a lot of people

.

And I wonder

Out of all of them

Who wants “more” in their life?

Who feels lucky to receive

More money

More food

More choices

More intimacy

More sex

More blah blah blah

More

.

And I wonder

Why it is

That I live in such a land of plenty

And yet watch as

This body cringes

At most advances to receive

“More”

.

Running

Away

Wanting to quiet

Wanting to clear

Wanting to settle

Wanting to simplify

Wanting the whirlwind

The whirlwind

The whirlwind

To stop

.

Receiving, overwhelm

Receiving, anxiety

Receiving, nausea

Receiving, vomit

Receiving, illness

It always comes

Eventually

.

I’ve tried

Many times to battle

To strengthen

To transform

To understand

To push through

To gain

Freedom

But eventually

Sickness

This resistance

Finds a way to whittle

.

I wonder how many bodies

Hold these stories

That dam up the center

To process receiving

Digesting

These old, old traumas

Unspoken

That resist any and all

Sense of “more”

Stories so embedded

As if thorn wriggled

Into flesh that’s given up

Fighting

Embedded

And part of

And extremely difficult

To extract

.

To speak of

Even

This is speaking the unspeakable

What this is,

Not vanity

Not desire for thinness

But fear

Of gargantuan

Roiling responses

Of this body

That holds eons

.

Eons of suffering

Eons of manipulation

Eons of separation

Eons of ostracization

Eons of repeated experiences

Ending in tragedy

I can’t even know

How many threads

I am attached to

.

Breaking

Breaking this

Breaking this open

Scalpel in hand

Ready to carve

Ready to be the whittler

A hovering salivation

Yet questioning

How this will be done

Location long forgotten

.

The location of fear

The location of trauma

The location of terror

The location of hiding

The location

Where it all began

Hovering

This scalpel

She wants to dig in

For all her relations

.

But without location

She risks death

Circling her body

Plotting entrypoints

A carving

A carving

A carving

Away at all the locations

Where the unspeakable

May be housed within

.

She is grateful

She is healthy

She no longer qualifies

She is no longer emergency

But like the Steppenwolf

This pacing

Salivating

Hunger

Haunts her

.

As of November 8, 2021

At 1:34pm Pacific Standard Time

According to census information

There were 7, 801, 472, 470 people

On planet Earth

How many of them are asking

This question

Scalpel in hand

Hovering

Pacing

Is there something wrong with receiving?

Is there something wrong with how I’m receiving?

Is there something wrong with how we’re receiving?

More

More

More

How many?

How many?

How many?