#amy key

I reached too hard for courage and pushed it further down inside me. I reached too hard for the sparring part of me pushed it beyond reach.

When I have thrown coins into fountains and wells, it has been with a private wish for love. When I’ve blown the candles out on my birthday cake. When I have drawn a card from the tarot, it has been in the hope for guidance about how to find love. When on one summer solstice I wrote something I wanted to manifest on a piece of paper and added it to the communal fire, that thing was romantic love. If I catch a shooting star, scatter the seeds of a dandelion clock with my breath, see a double fucking rainbow. None have yet been granted. I still wish.

Rather than being something that I should negotiate with, restrain or deflect, cravings are ways in which I am in touch with my body’s communicative abilities. If I disowned my cravings, refused to listen to what my senses were lacking or wanted more of, what else would I miss of my own embodied desires? It’s already hard enough to listen to the body through the interminable piped noise of purity, wellness and correct-seeming behaviour. Eat this, not that. Drink this, not that. Fuck this way, not that way. Dress like this. Move like this. Think like this. Transact like this. And don’t you dare give in to a craving. Occasionally – not often – I find myself not quite satisfied. I want more, something else, but I consider these seemingly fresh needs as an invitation to try again. Perhaps I crave something I’ve not yet encountered. So I eat and I crave. I allow for mistakes. There’s pleasure in not being certain something will work. Pleasure in the lifelong experiment of meeting my needs.

Each time we don't say something we want to say, we're dying.