Daniel Garcia

EVER HOPING YES

sure as my own name i have learned the work of alchemy / for what other name exists for magic that transmutes pain to light / i knew waning as a synonym for survival / which is an easy enough metaphor for endurance / i recall each night beneath a moon where i tilled my body for another’s despite my refusal / often / i made yes my first choice because it was all i was allowed / the world has seen more wilt than bloom from me & so i know better now: you can’t unstitch the story from behind a wound / all you can do is dress it / i need not tell the story behind the pain to know i got to the ending of it / when i say submission is the most powerful act i’ve ever committed / i am not dressing trauma in the clothes of reclamation / i am saying i have no further interest in withering / what defiance is greater than to find spring in the middle of winter / if there is no worse agony than an untold story / then allow me the one about submission born / not from the absence of safety / but the presence of it / i’ve known too many hands that took pieces of me thinking i’d not want them back when they were done / i know which words are synonymous with permission / i just never knew how to glory in them / i asked to tell a story & so now here it is: in one kiss he puts himself in my lap / all heat-seeking mouth & legs akimbo / in another i learn a moon is just a chunk of planet yearning for all it left behind / in another he is bright & alive & brimming with joy & he does not see me cry / for if any part of this hurts / it is only because he asks for it to / how he says please / & i say yes / & he says more / & i say yes / & he says thank you / & i say yes & y’all / when i say i am so damn careful with him / i mean i see everything i have always deserved / i grieve the boy who was buried in a dark room / i cheer the boy who dug himself out / who looked in the face of trauma & believed he’d be there / waiting / on the other side of winter / because i deserve submission without dressing it in survival first / because i deserve to feel safe & adored in my submission / small & powerful & giving all at once / because the magic isn’t that i said yes / it’s that i kept saying yes / when yes was not the only option / if there be craters / they are but open plots waiting for spring / & isn’t that the most magical thing: that in the face of everything trauma could not take from me / there i am / & what better proof exists to show not that i have survived / but that there is anything but wilt to be found here / that i am right there / that i am right here / there i am / there i am / there i am.

Daniel Garcia's work appears or is forthcoming in SLICE, Denver Quarterly, The Offing, Ninth Letter, Guernica, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. Poems appear or are forthcoming in The Puritan, Harbor Review, Ploughshares, and others. A recipient of a Short Prose Prize from Bat City Review, a Poetry Prize from So to Speak, and an editorial assistant for Split Lip Magazine, Daniel’s essays appear as notables in The Best American Essays. Daniel tweets @daniellovesyooh.