Justice Is a Theological Position

ray levy uyeda

i was once in a play as a turtle; i made my own shell. in another, the concept manifest destiny. i didn’t like pretending. still, i am my own first audience. did you know a turtle’s shell grows the same way our fingernails do. just out of the body. just all at once. it was then, as turtle-child, i felt the performance of the thing as real as the thing itself. both things existing in the mind. i believed this was the truth. what was it you said to me? that walk in november? about letting things be the way they are. (or was that a dream.) the sumac plants. the sky of lakes rippling outward. imagining the future as a place you have to look up into. the future as a place where imagination is required a bit. where you regularly hear people say to one another, what shape is that cloud. i went to visit pipeline fighters because i wanted to lay down my body. all week i laid in the sun splashed in the creek ate brownies made by a man from elsewhere. imagining a future where that’s how love happens. (because that’s where god lives.) because that’s what every plant wants, to be alive. but is ready to die. even if you cannot ever be honest in love you can go for a walk. make a tray of brownies. pause for sun and blue. the blankets of mustard and poppy that arrive with spring in california. not that i’d praise colonial borders. i need each flower to tell me who she is. she likes me // she likes me not. imagining the future as a place you have to look up into. the mask slides off then what. the world reveals its face to you. who said nature wasn’t queer. dawn has broken! the world insists itself.

ray levy uyeda is a poet from the Bay Area.

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