On Utopia

A tree with an impossible trunk. Girth. Girth, girth, girth. Only a giant woman’s arms were meant to wrap around this trunk, her body contorting, the back imprinting on her strong and supple skin. We all have the time to take a moment and plant ourselves in perpendicularity—legs long, spine expanding towards the sky. This position is our duty and our pleasure. Duty and pleasure are inseparable. Do we remember the times before? I’m not sure. Utopia scares me, it slips between my fingers, a TV’s static darting across the room and out the window. The impulse, my impulse, is to poke holes. To say, no, it can’t be that easy. So I dream of ease. I dream that wound-up springs burst into nothing, surprised by their own suppleness. I imagine that grieving never ends because its productive, because its a process—a growth process. I dream of ritual, of homecoming. It’s hard for me to imagine a place without bombs when I’ve never been bombed. I know that ease doesn’t come from nowhere—there’s a cost to my life here. I think of privilege. I think hard, prickly, pointless thoughts. So I go back to the tree. To downward facing dog as a resting pose. How much contortion must a flower undergo to reach that patch of sunlight its been kept from? My stomach growls with a full fridge. There are many ways to starve someone’s imagination. Utopia fees like a theatre game—where everyone agrees to the rules, and seeks to illicit people’s pleasures. When power and responsibility are so deeply bonded, they condense into a ball that can be passed back and forth.