Hope

This morning I feel hope. For the first time in these miserable fucked up Trump years, I feel a glimmer of that beautiful thing pulsing through me. And not just hope, but excitement, though the rational part of me that loves to spoil the party warns me to rein it in.

I did not get it until recently that when Trump was elected president it triggered my post traumatic stress. I’d thought it was because near the same time my sister had been diagnosed with a recurrence of her cancer. I didn’t get it until the Kavanaugh hearings when I wanted to scream with wild and unhinged rage. When I wanted to arm myself. When I wanted to reach through my laptop and claw his eyes out, and choke the hateful life from that entitled, misogynistic man. Then I put two and two together.

At 6:30 the morning after the election, I drove to Berkeley for my weekly dance and meditation practice. There were thirteen of us that dawn--sacred goddess number--filing quietly into the old church building. It wasn’t until we were all seated, scattered randomly around the room, some of us on chairs, some on mats, others lying flat, that I heard the first muffled sob.

It exploded out of all of us then. One by one. The keening and the wailing. The utter disbelief.

Until the first deep bass notes hit off the walls, and one by one we rose and then together the music took us.

Hope is that thing with feathers. Emily Dickenson.


Written the morning after Michael Cohen testified publicly before Congress.