I have been asked to do this,
and can’t imagine why.
I am not sure how to say
anything that is true.
 
I want to tell them
I don’t know any more
than they already do,
and none of us will ever know
any more than nothing.
 
I don’t know how to help them
make a home from a body
we learn to run from,
or observe from the porch.
I want to tell them
my expertise is detachment.

I only know float…
That viewing everything in your life
through a peephole feels safer.

Hovering above your body

in the corner of a childhood bedroom
that cannot possibly be your own
feels a lot like home sometimes.

I don’t know my body,
who is a foreigner.
The invisible invincible obstacle
I compete with silently.
 
I know that wild animals shake after trauma.
I know that our transcended mammalian brains
don’t always let us:
-shake
-move through it
-complete the fear cycle.
 
I’ve read enough of the self-help section
to parrot the information.
I’ve familiarized myself with the portions
of our brains that process experience.
 
I know how to love
my beautiful prefrontal cortex.
I’m infatuated with that neural network,
the smooth cerebral blood-flow.
 
 
I don’t know my body.
 
 
I want to tell them that mirrors
show everything in reverse
and camera lenses distort the view
and we will never know
what we appear to be to the world.
 
So it must be,
that all we can know
of what others know of our embodiment
is nothing.
Or at least,
a reversed skewed image
through a funhouse mirror.
 
I tell them instead,
that my therapist says to tap
the back of your hands
then your palms.
That our own touch
can feel like tiny lightening bolts
when you zoom in on it.
 
I am afraid
of storms.
I am afraid
to explore such a natural disaster
of becoming embodied.
I am afraid
to send a group of teens
into an existential crisis
without resolution.

So I take a breath.
I tap the back of my hands
and my palms.

I tell them

the most honest wisdom I can share.
Our bodies
are the least interesting thing about us
but we exist in these flesh suits
for some reason we’ll also never know.
 
I know what it is to touch
another person’s hand
and feel like these cells
aren’t alone anymore.
 
I know what it is like
to laugh and feel
my whole body quaking
without engaging with
the precious narrator of my life.
 
I know that those things
are what it means to be human
and we humans feel everything
but know absolutely nothing.