How Can You Make of This Body a Home (2024) T!K! Williams (a prayer) When you felt with your skin for the first time, did it shock you? Was it a new sensation? Could you wrap your mind around it like you could your hand around your mother's finger or like she wrapped the blankets around your body? That first night, among the animals, among the few who were, for a small portion of their lives (and a smaller portion of yours), your teachers instead of your students, among people who had bodies like yours, at least, up to a point, that night, when you had a body like they did, when you had a body like I do, when you became, all at once, did the learning hurt? Miracle or not, salvation or not, love and endless love or not - were the nights still cold? Did you sleep well, when the crying passed? Did the crying pass? When you came from nothing - from everything - into something, did you think you had a boundary now? Did it lessen you? Filled as you were with grace, made as you were of light, wen the sun fell and the stars said that they wanted to try reflecting you for a while instead, did you feel that you had become small? Were you afraid that you had a limit now? A boundary? Could you see your self in the mirror or in the surface of the sea water beneath your feet? Could you point at it and, with a steady voice, say that you were that, that that was you? Could you do so without fear? With joy in your voice? Could you see good in it? Could it be something other than the first shouted word of your death sentence? If you could choose to take this flesh, if you of your own will, subjected yourself to having this body, having it like I do, does that mean that it has worth? --

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