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