Rise to the Sun

Olivia is a melody that has made a song of my universe, and I realize I want to spend a long time trying to figure out all the notes.

I've been searching and searching and here, with her, is the first time I've ever felt found.

That’s one of my favorite parts about concerts, you know?” She turns to lay on her side and props her head up on one arm. “It’s like being part of some, I don’t know, organism? A living thing. All of us part of a body that needs full participation from each cell to function. You know what I mean?” I was only adequate at science in school, but I understand what she’s saying. “Yeah, exactly. The bands are the lungs, but we’re the breath.

Love is messy and awkward and ugly, but at least it's honest.

I believe all we have is our word, that when we say things we should mean them, and mean them wholeheartedly.

Somewhere in the light-years of space between the spiritual and the scientific, between the known and the ineffable, there's live music.

My church is the press of bodies together in the crowd, the pulse of a bass guitar vibrating under our feet, and a lead singer preaching the gospel of rebellion and revolution and love through beautiful harmonies and perfect chord progressions.

She was right to be cautious about coming to a place like this, I know. These days, the danger of just being alive and in public is practically as American as fireworks on the Fourth or apple pie or voter suppression. But this. This is what it's all about. You take your chances going to the movies or out to eat or to a concert because this is what it feels like to be alive.

When her eyes stop on me and her smile goes wide, I know. Toni said before that I was worth every good thing, but I think it's more than that. I am every good thing.

Maybe I could be more than a collection of my parents' anxieties. Maybe I could find a way to love wholly, and fiercely, without having to settle for one or the other.