swell

love poems and other tributes

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

I fill my body with love and dignity. I honor and respect the sacred depths of my being, the place in me where my soul’s desires meet the curves of my body. I celebrate and embrace my body and its intuition.

~ Dr. Tererai Trent, The Awakened Woman

Before it was a celebration of sacrificial love (or blood offerings, depending on your perspective), Easter was a celebration of ecstatic, erotic love. The egg and the rabbit are the two most widely recognized and prevalent symbols of the holiday, and both hold deep association with fertility, women’s sexuality, and creative energy. Reclaiming this aspect of the season means allowing myself to take up space in the world as a fully sexual entity in my own right. This has been a long journey, one fraught with the excavation of puss-filled soul wounds, sleepless nights, dissolving into rivers of tears and snot when all I had wanted was a special evening with my man—but there have been equal moments of deep knowing, when the rightness of what I am doing spills through my body like liquid light; moments of fun, of bliss, of soul-connection, and, yes, pleasure. Reclaiming my own sexuality has turned out to be one of the most (ahem) satisfying experiences of my life.

Many people have walked this journey with me, the vast majority of them have touched me only with their words; we’ve never met. In gratitude, I offer those words to you. May they awaken a divine shimmy within you, and may you find the courage to lean into it. Be free.

My sweet darling,
all these tears,
this hurt,
the pain in your heart, 
do not fight it anymore
it is a gift,
you see,
to feel this much
and even though 
it's hard
it means you're alive...

with each of these 
tearful breaths gasped
your soul awakens,
more alive in the pain
than you were in the numb.

You are coming back 
to me now, my love
lucid in this darkness--
so cry aloud
yell
and fall
and I will 
be here waiting
to catch you
when the waking up
is done. 

~Atticus

Let the soft animal that is your body love what it loves.

~Mary Oliver

When it comes to orgasms, the less internal and external pressure there is to perform, the more likely it is that pleasure will result. When it comes to intimacy with a partner, trust and relaxation are much bigger contributing factors than actual technique. When we pleasure ourselves, doubt, performance anxiety, and excessive thought diminish our ability to feel pleasure. Understanding and being sensitive to the feelings in our bodies creates stronger pleasure than any fancy technical application.

~Michaela Boehm, The Wild Woman’s Way

i want to honeymoon myself.

rupi kaur, the sun and her flowers

you must remember it too
how the rest of the city slept
while we sat awakened for the first time
we hadn't touched yet
but we managed to travel in and out
of each other with our words
our limbs dizzying with enough electricity
to form half a sun
we drank nothing that night
but i was intoxicated
i went home and thought
are we soul mates

~rupi kaur, the sun and her flowers

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That’s what I want—to hear you erupting. You Mount Saint Helenses who don’t know the power in you—I want to hear you…If we don’t tell our truth, who will?

~Ursula K. Le Guin