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PHOENIX: The Science of Restoration (Taylor McCleery Sloey-Lafayette, LA)


You got burnt to the ground sitting on a curb outside of an educational supplies store. On a Tuesday. Between his evening shift and weekly excursion for discounted beers at the corner bar with the guys. The scene felt reminiscent of the summer you sat on the sidewalk falling in love with each other’s words til 4 in the morning. Sting. Burn. You see, the elaborate surprise birthday parties candlelit dinners prepared and hidden notes on bicycle spokes no longer compared to the prospect of brief international travel and French pussy.
Matches lit to the tone of “I can’t explain but you’re just not enough anymore” Hissed from a tongue you once knew like your own. Spark Flame Fire ablaze You fell apart. Amorphous ash. And like the phoenix, was forced to slowly collect your charred carbon chemistry And reassemble it into plumage, or a forced smile “I’m really doing fine… considering”
Mythology misled us The resurrection of the phoenix is not a one-time event but rather you rebuild yourself again every day. Some days with a wingspan malformed and misshapen But we build ourselves again
And it is this process by which we are superhuman By which we are magic We are vulnerable We are resilient We are stupid enough to love again We are New Orleans We are Haiti We are Japanese island cities in the center of Tsunamis We are Hiroshima Vietman We are ephemeral springs, and volcanic lavas We are Ralph Nader and we just keep running for election through the GREEN PARTY We are impossibly naïve and skeptical But we rebuild
And sometimes this process occurs in the form of crying for six days And sometimes it occurs in the form of putting your mouth on every man and gin & tonic in town And that’s ok Because the fires are Are inevitable and unavoidable
But like the forest We return more lush, More diverse and more beautiful each time we burn.

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