Alive

Punta Sur, Isla Mujeres

I’m alive, what does it mean?
A soft breeze through the window
caresses my cheek to say good morning.
This housing in a physical body
on a physical planet,
gifts me with feeling the breeze.

I am alive, and yet
my body’s made of empty space
held together by electrical fields.
The surgeon can hold a heart in her hands
but the closer in you peer,
emptiness takes all the space of its shape.

Yet everything alive
works every second to stay that way.
Ceaseless feeding, perpetual repair –
what a driving thrust.
And most of us don’t give up
until we must.

I’m alive, are you?
What if it’s a dream
the heavy rain I hear is dreaming?
Whatever the prize of life may be,
let me celebrate the secret
and inhabit more fully the  fortune of my flesh.

Time I stood inside of life
and shouted out its wonder
When this real world shall vanish
and I exist without a body in another,
I shall remember with fondness the miracle
of breeze caressing my cheek.

©Susa Silvermarie 2026

image by kurtdeiner