WATERS OF VULNERABILITY: a bypo journal

This stream races with urgency

Water rushing through rocks and trenches

Perpetually sounding like rain

Inviting me into vulnerability

Inviting me into community

 

Here I sit writing

Digesting the contours of this space

Finding my own water level in this new culture

I yearn for authenticity and honesty

I yearn to taste truth

To taste my own expanding vulnerability

 

I was drawn to this place with intention

Invited by my beloved spirit sibling, Dragon

I am so grateful they thought of me

Grateful for their kinship

Grateful for their exuberant joy

 

What we do here is a brave social experiment

It is an exercise in science fiction

We invite ourselves to co-create something new

Something bold and radical—transgressive and resilient

 

Yet toxic patterns are persistent

White paternalism withers slowly

My siblings of color strive to make this space whole

To create a vessel for all that we need

To transcend antiblackness

To overcome the hydra of racism

 

We create a zygote of liberation

Allowing waters of vulnerability to cleanse

Digging deep to dismantle systems of oppression

Striving to grow from mistakes

 

To emerge and evolve

To find deeply rooted inner magic

The interstitial and liminal magic of empathy

Magic creating fractals of connection and liberation

 

I yearn to shed my snakeskin

Not to recreate old patterns

But to evolve like a chrysalis

Creating a vortex of endogenous awakening

 

I shake off debris that serves no purpose

Instincts born through years craving validation

Years masking my inner insecurities

Years of performativity and people pleasing

 

I yearn to know my soul’s truth

To feel that truth pulsate

Germinating emotional honesty

Germinating vulnerability

 

This community is trying

More than many I have inhabited

Spirits are growing

Souls are opening

 

I feel people moving deeply

Expanding beyond lived experience

Connecting with that elemental human place

A place through which we can expand

That place of visceral pain that lets us relate

Relate to all manifestations of systemic oppression

 

As I write, this water rushes

Loud and resounding like a mighty river

I am privy to a turbulent conversation

These waters invite me to go deep

To explore what I can share

To explore what I can learn

 

This is an ecstatic dance

It is a sensual space of creation

I submerge in these waters of vulnerability

I emerge transformed

 

I feel my fire

I feel desire for the sacred

I am conjuring karmic chemistry

Reawakened to purpose, love, and community

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Image is by Brian C. Fields >> @bfieldsnc on twitter

–BYPO PHOENIX c)2022