DYLAN CARRTER REDSHAW
Life is short
I love my body
I love it because it changes which means I am
Alive
My mom said I should take care of myself
Shave my legs
What if taking care of myself is not shaving
What if I want my hair
What if I love it
What if I love my stomach
And I don’t care if anyone sees
What if every inch of me was Free to Breathe&Sleep&Grieve&Grow
What if my Body was only my Body and
Here is my Soul.
What if I showed you what’s underneath?
What if I choose to be Beautiful
All Of Me All Of The Time and I Know it and I Show it and I Clap my Hands and This Body Dances
All Bodies Do
What if there was no body?
What if It’s Alone
What if you do it Alone and no body can touch you because Your Body is Yours and you finally SEE THE CHOICE LOUD AND CLEAR TO
LOVE YOUR BODY ON YOUR OWN like you
Know you Love
Life.
Deep down. If no one was here
Would you still keep living?
What if your body was yours
Fully yours. What if you had never given
What if no one took
What if you weren’t
What if the world
What if I wish to be undesired by all who have ever desired me
I Know
I Am
Just Another Body
But to Someone. To Many.
To Me
My Body is a
church that does not Exist.
Sacred.
Heaven. Is something I’ve been thinking of,,
Something
Indescribable
Indestructible. You. Can’t. Reach. every little birthmark and everything and SO
LIFE IS SHORT WHAT IF
I SAID ALL THIS
ALL ABOUT MYSELF
I LOVE WHO I AM
I LOVE HOW I GROW
WHAT IF THIS IS MY RELIGION
WHAT IF I DON’T NEED REASONS
WHAT IF I SAID IT.
WHAT IF I MEANT IT
WHAT IF I AM JUST HERE
IN THE PRESENT
THE LOVERS
BODY AND SOUL TOGETHER
I DON’T KNOW HOW WE MADE IT HERE
BUT HERE I AM
I know you are not just soft
Like everything I know you are Opposite I know you are the sun and the moon and the stars and the dark and the waves and the park and so I visit you even when our bodies are far.
I know about your strong and I want to meet every past version of you
I want to kiss in your childhood bedroom and prove you always deserved it. I know you want to be silent and I know you want to scream and I know you’re silly and serious and scared and sacred and selfless and words could never do you justice but I want you to see what I see.
You don’t need to explain yourself to me but I
Crave Your Explanations
For Everything
Whatever you want to say
Whatever you Need
Whatever you have the words for
I will listen.
You do not have to apologize for feeling
Surprisingly
You do not have to beg me to care
You are allowed to be messy
But I know why you are soft.
You are Braver than a World that worked so hard to make you Opposite
And You Are Everything
Shooting stars and lightning and fate and randomness and rainbows and ART and oceans of gold and every creature every crystal every color every stick and stone
You’re karma
You’re an angel at the disco
You’re my knight in shining armor
You’re the maestro and the music and the muse and the meaning
You are all the reason I need to rhyme
You are a dream I refuse to stop dreaming
I know you are small and I could lift you off the ground and I know you are larger and more meaningful than the entire universe-even the unobservable bits- and I don’t usually fuck with all this meaning but I mean it- and I can’t believe I found you out here In the middle of nowhere
All the pieces of you fit inside
I don’t have to reorganize
I could make your load a little lighter
I won’t get tired of who you are
(I could never get bored of the stars)
Here is my heart.
I want to handle with care all of your soft and all of your strong if you let me
And even after the worst of days
The sky still lights up pink for me and the moon is the sun and the children still sing
Off key but beautiful, meaningful somehow
Meaning that searches and surfs and settles the depths of my soul
I was them before
And they will be me
And we are all each other.
You have to forgive yourself
For all of the mistakes you will inevitably make
It is not world ending
It’s just the passenger side mirror
It’s just a tooth
It’s just life
I break things!
I lose things!
I’m finding so much!
Objects are less important than they appear
I am not guilty
(I am not a coward like you
You know who you are
And you have to live with it)
(I am brave enough to choose love
Again and again and again and again
And I have to live with it and
I do)
I am human
I am a heart
I am an ache
I make mistakes
I choose grace
I choose children
I choose absolution all alone because I am trying my best and my best is enough and my best is different every morning I wake up different in so many ways and I don’t have time to explain or complain I just want to live before I die
I need my time wise
No timeline
I roll I rock I ride
I crash I care I cry and I
Flow feel float like a Butterfly
Forward like Water like Karma
Drop me off anywhere and I will
Evolve
I Am Evolving Endlessly
Innocent nature
To make mistakes
Is inevitable
Bleeding
It’s all apart of it
Everything makes sense this is the experience (and I’m making it up as I go!) ((like a poem!!!)) and nothing makes sense about being alive but
You are.
Somehow.
Someway.
Today.
Keep
Going.
Broken wings still fly.
All light has its shadow.
Bravery looks like little bugs and little girls and little by little by little by little
It’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you
Sometimes it’s hard to see it but
Sometimes it’s hard to feel it but
Everything that falls stops falling at some point
Everything has its landing
Everything has an impact
Death is birth and
Birth is death
And the past is only a lesson I can finally accept as a lesson and not as my Present
The past is what brought me to here
To you
To this blushing sky
To this moon
In our own sweet time
(Knowing this time could be our last)
It’s just money
It’s just material
It’s just my mind
Everything is a mirror
Take a good look
Keep looking
Keep living
Keep loving
Don’t lie
You are beautiful chaos
Fragile like a storm
Tough like a violet
The stuffed animals are for the nightmares
Miraculous and tragic
The bandaids are for the accidents
You are magic
You are purposeful and meaningful and nothing but chance MIGHT AS WELL DANCE
IN THE MIRROR
Objects are stronger
(Objects are stranger)
Objects are braver
And clearer and kinder and MORE AND MORE AND MORE
THAN THEY APPEAR.
Even after the worst of days
I find myself here
In everything
Everywhere
Thank you
the life we lose and why we miss it
the journal I still have from kindergarten
I haven’t lost it yet
some things I cannot forget
some things I think should be gone and
forgotten
my six year old skin
how much I wanted to kiss him back then
when my parents would kiss
and my dad would make dinner
when little girls ate without aim to be thinner
the ID I left in New York
last December
the winter we spent in Virginia
the stranger who smiled
when high schools
didn’t allow
shootings
the keys and the keys and the keys and the keys
and the lock, honestly
before February 14th, 2018
the way you would kiss me
how much you missed me
all of the dreams that I wished we would be
back when I had dreams
17
people
I didn’t
really
meet
and now I know them infinitely.
I know that building intimately- I know she’s dancing
up
and
down the stairs ..
wondering how many stairs it takes until her mother
makes it there
to bring her home.
she never makes it
she never gets older
age fourteen
is as old as we’ll know her
if ever there was a time when we didn’t praise
murder
I miss kindergarten
learning about colors
sucking at numbers
expecting I’ll live past 100
I miss just existing
before monthly bleeding
I miss you.
And I miss you.
And I miss you.
there. I said it.
you are the reason
I’m writing this
you are every reason
to live on
to remember
to forget
to murder murderers and protect children.
you are every lost piece of me
the keys and the ID, and
the lock, honestly
you’re exactly why I miss it
how I lost it
where I’ll run to find it
I look for you in all lost things. I hear you in my earrings- one in my bed, one that I..
left somewhere-
sometimes I think I could never miss anything
the way that I miss you.
I remember what I’ve lost, what I’ll lose-
it doesn’t end. the losing
(I have to get better at forgetting)
