Look at us now in this full room.
This might be the most daring thing
We will do today.

Gathering in person,
Leaving behind our screens,
Those tombstones that
Reflect us in darkness.

Feeling the hearth heat of a body
And the hair on their skin
Like a grandfather’s stubbly kiss.
Rough and real
Silence your needy cell phone and listen.
This could be the most daring thing
You do in weeks.

No ads shivving you
With the emptiness of your life
Only to fill it with half-chewed dust.

No pay walls or subscription service
Renting out the human experience
Without giving you one.

Look to the right.
This could be the most daring thing
That stranger will do today.

Smiles full of popcorn and snaggles.
Yesterday’s makeup and flyaways.
The rolls of yummy tummies,
The realness of them becoming mercurial
In a chemically altered, digitally remastered farce.

Take a look to your left.
This could be the most daring thing
They will do in their life.

A room rich in human voices
And poor in silence.
No curated audio experience
In your headphones alone.

Yes, we all hear the baby crying.
Yes, we all smell your fart, Karen.

And the disruptions like nosy neighbors
Peeping in our windows,
Laughing at our beautiful, naked bodies.

The same curious neighbors that find us
Twitching in the backyard,
Who hold our blue hands and call for help.

Which is to say more humans.
Which is to say more disruptions.

Look at your feet on the earth.
She has always supported you
Because, like gravity,
Everything pushing down on us
Is also holding us up.

Someone with a name who can remember yours
And a face you can kiss like starlight
Runs this store with sweat and pimples,
With bad hair days and wedgies.
Someone with a home you can walk to
With doors that often open to disruptions
Puts comfort food on their own table
That is meaningless as a hug on its own.

We don’t moan into a good bite
When we’re alone in the break room
As much as we do together.

We don’t laugh as loudly, as freely.
We keep some part of ourselves caged up
And convince ourselves we don’t need it.

Look at the diversity, the queerness, in this room.
The incurable wounds, the romantic hopes.
This is the most daring thing
They will ever do
Over and over again.

Those that have stumbled here
Scraping through fear, disease,
Traveling over real space in real time
To sit with you, in a temple
Where you are god and acolyte alike.

Remember when this was illegal
Remember this when it is illegal again