When each breath is full and deep, and my belly is a bowl of softness, when the madness of the world slows down enough that I can see each muscle shift, each weight change, of the great universal somersault, when the light from the stars on a moonless night is brighter than anything humans have created, that’s the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible.
When your arms flash around me and your lips, with a gentle kiss, brush the top of my head in a gesture both intimate and fleeting, when words flow out of me in thin, rising, entangling streams, like the curly smoke of incense in warm moist air, when my throat is so open and the room so resonant, that the resulting vibrations finally loosen everything I’ve been trying not to hold onto, that’s the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible.
When I’ve pushed my brain into a dark corner, just before the claustrophobic panic sets in, I breathe and remember how light and vast the world can be, when your hand slides onto my thigh while we’re driving in the darkness and leaves a five-pointed pool of warmth that I retrace with my own hand for days afterwards, when the combination of garlic, basil and olive oil bites my tongue with a near orgasmic splendour, that’s the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible.
When I’m tense and tired and your late-night email makes me laugh so hard everything melts away, when in the stillness of deeply listening to music, I see the shine of tears running down your face, when the sun illuminates a golden path through my room, inching slowly because this time I’ve remembered to notice, that’s the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible.
When the air and ground are so cold that the snow beneath my boots is the only thing brave enough to make a sound, when the tea in my mug is too hot to drink, but I sip it anyway knowing that some kinds of pain actually feel good, when my cry for help in the dark hours of the night is answered by the love of people I am grateful to call friends, that’s the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible.
— heidi kalyani, 2017
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line