Brooke Pratt

Radically Human

I am a soft nerve pulling the threads of pulsing memories from my aorta. I am too romantic. Too forgiving. Too raw—all glorified stucco blood, oxidized red in the open air. I pray to hope like its love’s only disciple—carrying sparkling golden-gilded light in tired hands and passing offerings to every heavy heart insisting closed walls harbor safety while refusing to glance at the pastel promises flooding the horizon of possibility. I wince at the mercy of an old familiar ache. Love is a constant human condition—a wildly, beastly response to firing synapses answering to the guttural reflex of a learned paradox—if you accept the scarcity of love, heartbreak will be easier to take. I know better; there’s no solace in selective solitude. I am radically human—all the refracting prism hues, shattered and (still) hellbent on shining through all the cracks. I am a lion-hearted reminder, an impossibly gentle howl—love is, love is, love is.