To strive for perfection sounds utterly boring to me. It implies that you’ll be finished with your journey at some point.
I’d much rather strive for improvement and interesting travels. After all, you’ll have lots of opportunity to make mistakes along the way and learn from them.
And to become remarkable, one has to earn some marks on themselves.
my softness is earned and fought for. the fur of my head is silk when you have my trust. the claws of my hands are calm and protective for you if only i know that you deserve it. my voice calls out for you and your touch when your worth of my closeness is without danger, when the thunder outside is nothing more but light’s celebration of our connection in all of the world’s colours for i am safe in our home and you with me and i with us.
you never domesticated me. you couldn’t, could try and fail and i would laugh through white-sharp teeth at your desperation, so we do it another way and no, you weren’t asked, this way or not at all.
there is no obedience in the rumble of my heart and no screams no anger no cooing will bend me into the shape you want. i do not adjust to you. i make you mine and let you run for me. i am not yours or one of yours and neither do i belong just because you are somewhere; i simply am, and we exist together in the same space and my soul’s purr may light up your horizon, but you are not the beacon of my life. and your dominance is an illusion because we flow in a symbiosis where you believe to have the upper hand.
but never, never forget who I am.
that i came to you out of the wilderness with golden sunflecks on my fur and nature’s war at the tips of my paws. that i showed you the cool hope of water that kept you alive and that you climbed for us and i hunted and we grew together, stronger with the burn for adventure and the wideness of our lands, ours and not just yours.
know that you will only hear my purr if you know of the roar that lies awake in the bottom of my lungs.
don’t you dare forget who i am. i am the apex and have been and will be, and you are only here with me because i let you.
maybe life is just the universe’s attempt at understanding itself. it takes hundreds of brains to understand the brain; maybe it also takes billion billion billions of lives and atomic matter and light to as much as reach for the everything of it all.
so you failed at something. it happened, it’s over, can’t be fixed or taken back.
cry. sob your eyes out. slam your fist against the wall, again, both of them, press your face into something soft and yell. scream, loud and wild and disappointed, until your throat hurts and you want to hate the world. tell yourself or someone else how unfair, terrible and mean the world is. lie on your bed. drown your mind in pity until your mouth is full of sadness and everything is salt and cold water. when the room has gone silent around you, take a breath, deep, slow.
good.
raise your head.
find the horizon.
and walk.
there will come the day that you can breathe again. not just because you’re able to, but because you will. you will, you will, even after the smoke has rot-smoldered your cells into darkness you thought couldn’t be rebuilt. you will, with your eyes drinking in the sky until cerulean hums in your neurons like a symphony from hundred years ago, you will with your nails out like claws and dry lips that have tasted fire but still, you breathe, breathe, in and forward and out. there will come the day where your old veins fall into their components, when carbon and oxygen snap into new bounds, ions chasing your blood.
maybe it takes time to get your lungs used to the new scars on you. but they’re made from you, after all, woven from cells and born from your dna, and nothing could be more essentially you than that. breathe, and know that you are.
i’ve found that all our actions and deeds are done one of these ways.
out of love, because our soul craves and desires it;
out of necessity, because our mind and body require it;
or lastly out of spite, because we were told that we can’t, won’t, shouldn’t ever; and we raised our heads, teeth bared in a grin, and said:
watch me conquer.
And he knew that he was loved
When this one didn’t try to make him adore this one more than anything, more than his own breath and the earth beneath his feet
But instead
Took his hand and asked him about the rainforest of his mind
Put this one’s lips on his shoulder and begged to learn about the night sky of his blood
Whispered a plea and wished to dead gods for him to see the twitch of his own muscles that could bear a roar of war-storms underneath
Instead of asking to be loved
This one leaned against him and spoke: I want to know how you love yourself
And when he could only answer that he had forgotten
This one watched, silent, just to say: May I stay and see how you remember yourself?
He thought about it, quiet, in the dark, and said: Yes. And then we can love me together, and you too, just as much.
“You can’t fight a dragon by running away,” said the companion to the hero when he saw her flinch before the beast.
“I am not running,” the hero said. She walked backwards, ducking below the monster’s fire, and then dropped her sword. Her companion called after her when she started to climb up the mountain’s side, away from the valley where the beast roared for blood. “You won’t defeat it like that! Only cowards run, only cowards drop their sword and go for the easy way!”
The hero had found a ledge in the wall. Pulling herself up on it, she stared down at the monster, and told her companion: “Move out of my way.”
“You’re giving up,” her companion whispered, disappointment bright in his eyes.
And the hero tucked an arrow from her quiver, raised her bow, and shot the beast right in its mighty neck, where a sliver of flesh had shown itself between the raised spines.
The companion was silent. As the beast fell, its scales crumbled apart, a last roar shaking from the body before it thundered to the ground. All that was left after the dust had settled was silver ash that spread through the air, and a gleaming pile of gold underneath.
“I didn’t run,” the hero said when she was back on the ground, helping her companion back on his shaky feet. She smiled when he threw his arms around her and began sobbing. “Why,” her companion whispered.
The hero put her bow on her back and brushed some ash off her shoulder.
“I didn’t run, I changed my angle. And I didn’t give up either.
I just took a run-up, and I took aim.”
“I don’t understand,” frowned the child that had been listening to the storyteller all night. “My dad always said that you shouldn’t say things that make people cry, because you’ll make them sad.”
The storyteller smiled. “Yes. Your words shouldn’t be spoken or written with the intention to hurt someone. If the words of a story make the reader cry, it should be because they hurt for the world that you have created, because they sob their soul out for the pain of growth and change that your characters suffer through.
Do not hurt them – let them love together with your creation, and let them laugh and cry and live with it. Let them feel your story.”
A human sat down at night and raised their face to the moon.
“Tell me,” they asked, voice heavy from the dark in it, “is there hope?”
The moon was silent for a long time. It let a cloud pass by, let new stars come and watched old ones dim out. Then, it said:
“Dear human, what are you?”
The human hung their head. “Nothing. I am nothing but alive, not anything.”
And because the moon could not smile, it went full and round and silver instead, and shone down. “That, brave one, is your answer. There is hope, my child, because you are still here.”
Moami 