I wrote what I didn’t realize would be a love poem, what I didn’t realize would help me redefine the erotic, what I didn’t realize could be so healing:
an easy love
do you have an easy love?
an erotic touch without the
romantic tropes
brushing hands that
don’t vacuum you up to your elbows
down to your heart
propelling a rush through your veins that
washes over like a shower with
sprinkles of sugar and shiny shivers
do you have an easy love?
a sweet separation
the dance where
extended arms rest upon
the other like a tress of hair
falls
to where it belongs
an easy love
isn’t easy
it’s synchronous smiles and
psychic somatics
it’s remembering rot makes magic
an easy love feels like
spring seeding
summer singing
fall fermenting
winter weeping
an easy love
isn’t easy because
it doesn’t fight
change
This poem dripped out of me after I read about ecosexuality. It reminded me that beauty can come from shit, platonic intimacy is magical, and that my relationship with my partner has an ocean flow I love to swim in.
Lately I’m exploring the earthiness of relationships and connecting this to advice like “no relationship is perfect”, “don’t settle”, “dump him”, “communicate your needs”, etc. When you look at the Earth, it’s easy to see the interdependence and sustaining connection that’s everywhere, and we can’t even see the unimaginable connection beneath our feet in the form of mycelium networks.
We have models of relationships all around us on this planet. Different facets help each other grow, they disagree, they share nutrients, they destroy each other, they build homes, they hunger, they nurse, they prey, they coalesce. This is an erotic and healing life full of discord and symbiosis.
The erotic touch between a blade of grass and a dandelion, a bee and a sunflower, or a bird and a branch is mirroring what is possible for all of us. When these elements show up for each other, the connection is undeniable. And this is enough.
When I hear “no relationship is perfect”, it reminds me that a relationship by its very essence is messy, even the yummiest parts come from an abyss. A relationship is a solo and collective dance, an erotic question, a (forever) need, a (most of the time) choice. It is an expression of life itself. And life is simply about being with what is, not chasing after what is it? So when I hear the advice of “don’t settle” is, I pivot. I ask: Where is your interdependence? What is or isn’t being shared? Can you access your needs and choices? How are you living with ease and messiness? These answers tell me more than determining if the relationship has too many red flags.
And yet, “don’t settle” is an answer to the ways we forget we have needs, how we try to make decay look alive, and how ease and messiness are upside down and inside out.
I went camping recently and saw a skeleton of something on the ground. I was mesmerized by its shape, and I picked it up to take a closer look and determine what it was. I showed it to my partner, and he realized it was from a pinecone. We held both the pinecone and pine scale up and took a photo.
I marveled at this relational dance in the forest: the skeletal pine scale and the pinecone, the conversation I shared with my partner, and the photo with both our hands touching these parts of the Earth. I used to believe ecology was a subject to study, but now I see it as a feeling. A culmination of interdependence, care, emergence, cycles of birth and death, agency, growth, and joy - LIFE.
Erotic shapeshifts from lingerie to pinecone observation. “Dump him” shapeshifts from a resolute wall to relational choices. “Communicate your needs” shapeshifts from fear of abandonment to my agency to decide. They drift back and forth while I reconcile the way we nurture nature.
And this abstract erotic plays out in my life…
- My platonic luck is such that I have friends who I made in grade school to friends I’ve met on Instagram. These loves are like a grove of sequoias where the oldest tree deeply knows my generational stories and the budding trees see me anew, holding so much promise. I am surrounded by love and wisdom and communal flirtation.
- My most intense intimate relationship lasted about a month. It was with someone who had me clinging to fantasies and crying during pilates. It was the cotton candiest of sugar. Our divorced marital strife was parallel. I acted like I didn’t, but I wanted more nutrients than he could offer. In the end, he granted me brevity. I was heartbroken and now I’m grateful. Because an easy love now simmers in my veins, it doesn’t rush. And sometimes you need a monsoon to know when to bask in the gentle rain.
If your healing story is a love story, then evoking the art of the Earth MUST be a part of it. Discovering the rot making magic MUST be a part of it. Being with the shifting seasons MUST be a part of it. Unshaming the messiness MUST be a part of it.
After all, an easy love isn’t easy because it doesn’t fight change.
