mindfulness clear and radiant Like a theme park, as a kid you run around so much ground to cover so much air and space to fly through and it’s all for you. Grown-ups usually use up land on stuff that means nothing to you. And yet they made all this for you. The world is rarely yours, but this is. And you can trust that no emptiness will find you all day. Not in the sky or waiting in line. Returns. Returns. It keeps coming back to you. You swallow it, flying, wide-open-mouth in the air never full-up, like the magician eating his long balloon noodle in one mouthful. You taste it in the cotton candy, in the screams that fly to the back of your throat. And if you ever know this feeling again you ought to use it. Go see the world in sunrise-hikes and wild swimming and long bus rides because the new worlds outside the window will be one large theme park. The world really is all yours; the beauty in a blue-painted door the sun setting behind the supermarket the car parking spaces with lines painted white and little flowerbeds planted by the side; it’s perfect, it really is. And it’s yours to move through. It wasn’t made for you or with any reverence to the sacredness of humans but that doesn’t mean it can’t be the place where you realise that all things are perfect.
Elijah East is a support worker for disabled adults in Leeds. His poetry concerns queer bodies and the queer experience, whilst also contemplating the spiritual. This is his first published poem, though his work can also be found on Instagram @elijahjayx .
Amethyst Review 