I want to tell you that your love makes my world spin in an elliptical orbit, stretching my perspective with each go around — that possibility is a stronger word when we’re together, that self-doubt shrinks into bed with a runny nose and a bad cough, that your tenderness and care are helping to reawaken a version of me that I had thought was forever buried under stubborn layers of conditioning and other people’s ideas of “being good”. I want to hold you close and thank you for seeing me and hearing me and believing in me, for handing me the chisel I’m using to loosen the protective paint I’d covered myself in when I was too broken and exhausted to fully be me anymore. In your presence, I am reminded of how much I used to shine, and how, despite the dark outer layers that have dulled the past few years, I’m beginning to shine again!
— heidi kalyani, 2017
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
