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You are enough

You are enough

When your throat closes

And even breath is

A trapped spider

Running back and forth

From glass wall to glass wall.

 

You are enough

When you say it’s time

But there’s no clock

Whose hands can reach out

And hold you

Back from what

You are about

Wordlessly to submit to

 

You are enough

When feet walk you

To the place

That darkness shrouds

Over the knowledge your head

Can’t overwrite your heart with

 

You are still enough

When you reason

When you shrug

Off reason

When you lie back

When you turn around

Just once more

I promise

 

You are enough

When you pluck

Thick fingerfuls of cotton

And listen to sense

Through sheaths of its muffling

Like the clouds

Menacing the clear blue skies

Of your (other) life

 

You are enough

When embrace

Feels like performances of ritual

When #MeToo chokes

The cherished anonymity of silence

Rending the tendrils of

Calibrated webs of ‘I’m fine’

 

It is enough now

And you are

Always

Enough

 

This poem is inspired by a Facebook post by Ijeoma Oluo

Alana Lentin