Dear diaphragm

Dear diaphragm,

I do not know you well, but I imagine I haven't been too good to you.

Today I shall hear you from the center between my breath, heart, solar plexus, abdomen, and gut.

I feel like you might have a lot to say, and I'm sorry I haven't listened well. It's easy to become disoriented in this chaotic realm, to hear your meaning through the noise. Like words unsound.

When I sense the gaze of a stranger, I sense you tighten, contract. Like getting ready to sprint, but with your breath and sound.

While you do not speak for me alone, without you, I would not speak.

But this does not mean you have nothing to say, and I worry that I drown out your intelligence with my pithy Nash rationality.

Sometimes, you want to yell, because you can yell.

Sometimes, you want to whisper, because you can whisper.

You are my bark, my sigh, my belly dancer.

You are special in my heart, because you have me to deal with, a backseat driver who has no idea what he's doing, and you put up with me with a smile.

But I also know the times when we are pals on equal footing!

To speak from the diaphragm is not just a turn of phrase; it means to allow you more input into not just the words that I say, but also the volume and tonal control you have a sense of where to place the emphasis.

You are the rhythm of my speech, a third party in the dance between two, communicating possibilities to me, me sending them back to you.

Perhaps I do know you well, just from the inside out.

How large is the mistake of treating you as an objective part of me that just does its thing, rather than a living partner in existence?

I feel the resonance of my voice, and my silence, in your body.

You hold an eagerness to speak within your flesh when you sense that it is time. You hold an eagerness to listen when you sense that the silence is enough, when the land entrances, the souls alight all around.

It feels like seeing the same old thing sincerely for the first time, when the words do not carry the traps of accusation and self-doubt. My sincerity, my wonder in between.

I lose myself in the poem, and I find that I am different upon my return.

It's metaphors all the way down, at least today!

It's a game you can practice and get better at playing! Language itself, the layers of metaphor, sharpening and clarifying the meaning of my words — the meaning registered by how they resound, excite, filter, and shout out all around from head to toe, heart to gut, flesh to lungs.

I can only ever know love others in first person, and you are the one whom I can love when I mix multiplex my words between first and second person.

And to know the love in me, I must set my inward gaze sincerely.

Then I will find that the gaze outward is no different from the gaze inward.

Because what is outside is what is inside. A mirror of myself, caught in the act.

Character and scene, subject and background.

A character who has grown up having seen aliens, a symbol of the love of poetry that she feels when improvising on the meaning of what she sees

Enter the real world, decade later.

Struggles to hold the truth of what they've seen side by side with the way of the world which denies

Then the moment she learned she's been living a lie:

A thought: these darn grown-ups so impressed by their fancy words.

A reply: "I'm an adult too, ya know"

A question: "I am?" sincerely

Silence, face flushes

The sky: Laughter.

Doubt creeps in, telling her to question what she saw, then apologizing for painting again and again, grey, the world, uncertain. A place where no one knows what's going on and drowning in the fear that the present is our destiny.

Then her light peeks again through the words you speak, my diaphragm, telling me that the truth does not come from doubt, even if it does filter through him, so do not be scared to open your heart, for you can trust in the love in the dark.