invitation to float

by bea mendoza & michelle agaron

You were a lived-in body when I met you, 
swelling and contracting to make room for me, your flighty passenger 
as I learned to navigate your ebbs and flows and you became 
my accidental home. 
You were all music, 
you were all soul. 
We nestled into ourselves and I lost myself for you, in you. We’re coffee cups in the morning giving way to sleepytime tea. Bunching blankets we crochet. I revel in all that you give me: the birds and their warble, orange sorbet in the summer, starbursts in the moonlight. You are easy to love. 
I could gaze at these four walls and wish for nothing more, I could I could I would I would (I should? Should I?) 
You are easy to love until you are not. 

This confusion, this contusion 
bears down on my soul I am no longer in the business of loving you, 
No longer interested in loving 
the sea falling over my hands 
the sand filling our shoes 
the sun falling over your face 
to rise again and again and again 
No more lying in wonder waiting wasting 

When I wake, we are aboard the titanic 
heading straight for oblivion 
and for the first time, I know it 
To live is to lose 
and I hold on to the wreckage I find you in, keeping you warm 
as you empty my veins to make space for your essence 
and we say grace around the table. 
Even now, after everything. 

Sometimes you loosen your hold on me 
to mimic the ocean’s indifference to sunken bodies, 
but the tide rises and this time, this time you save mine 
And I still do not know if you hold me close because you treasure my seaweed sinews
or because you are trying to keep the truth of humanity from me, 
Beyond you, there is more 

And so I travel oceans to escape you, finding new ways to puncture myself just to avoid you I remake myself: 
Undo cell by cell until I am unrecognisable, 
melting into the air I become an accomplice to aviation
letting the birds fashion me into nothingness, 
the kind of nothing that allows you to just be. 

But you find me in Vienna, where I am watching the dogs chase after each other, heads bent over nothing but the present. 

And I can soften, falling into you. 

Because all of this 
is all of you. 
I am you. 
Even now, 
after everything.

“invitation to float” and its accompanying video were co-created on opposite coasts of the usa by michelle agaron and bea mendoza. through a shared google doc and several hours on zoom, michelle and bea wrote the poem together, adding to one another’s stanzas, then separately recorded themselves reading the piece. bea mixed the audio, and michelle edited the video that contains clips shot by both. the entire process was deeply collaborative!