By Sam Yau
You were a primal bundle of joy.
You were the scream, the tears, the smile.
You felt everything in your body,
and let it pass through you.
As you grew up, life sometimes
presented you with a little more
agony and anguish than you could bear.
You learned to run away from it,
you would bury yourself in a book,
distract yourself from your pain
by thinking.
You would conceptualize,
escape into analysis,
relish the elation of synthesis,
be pleased with your rationalization.
You adored theories built
upon layers of abstraction.
You would see a tree, and
rather than running your hand along
the lines and wrinkles on the trunk,
or sniffing sticky fragrant sap, or tracing
the veins flowing through the leaves,
your mind would categorize it.
You were a walking brain
dragging your body behind you.
Unexpressed feelings knotted your muscles,
wrapped you up like a mummy.
Let yourself feel again.
Set yourself free.
Come home to your body.