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Rest is a return to the love letter
Inspired by Tricia Hersey
Written by Kamakani Albano
For a body to desire love, it must rest.
So as to remember the capaciousness
of the love that it can hold. To resist and endure.
Rest is a return to the deepest intimate desires.
For a body to feel love, it must rest.
Are we but machines to be stolen, enslaved, colonized,
or occupied under that which has done the same to the most sacred?
Rest is a return to the bones.
For a body to taste love, it must rest.
Mother tongues rejuvenate in stillness, shaken by
disconnection, remembering languages, elders, and songs.
Rest is a return to ancestral knowledge, to liberated futures.
For a body to smell love, it must rest.
Inhaling the rain’s blessing, the breath of the mountain’s
mist, the salt of the glistening bed. Aren’t you ʻono for it, too?
Rest is a return to the stolen exhale.
For a body to write of love, it must rest.
Cradled in Papahānaumoku’s arms and her oceanic
womb that first birthed life from the darkness of pō.
Rest is a love letter to the body, the rippling waters, the resisting ʻaʻaliʻi.
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