prayer for existence

All I know is that it is not far away. A Ukrainian girl is on my computer, and for once, I do not wonder about her hours. I wonder about her whole life. What will it be? What will it look like, in that moment crossing the tunnel, when she looks back? I pray, long and full. Now, she is thirteen, probably, with the way that her legs buckle slightly at the knees and her glasses slide a bit off her nose and her hair hangs over her right eye and she only half-faces the camera as if to say See me, Don’t see me and there is a stubbornness laced into the red rage on her cheeks and a fear, I think, tucked underneath her eyelids where a precious kind of sleep should be, the kind of sleep you get at thirteen but never again. She is holding a rifle and I don’t think she’s been sleeping. She is holding a rifle and she is learning to use it because she’ll need it and I do not have the confidence that it will be enough. 

I cannot stop looking at her hand laid atop the cold metal because, right now, I have a little hand laid across my collarbone and a little foot resting against my thigh and a curled-up spine on the bed beside me that I know wants to be under the covers but is resisting the change in moment. And these little bodies on the bed beside me are safe, so safe, on this land that has known invasion but whose invaders deny it and still call it home. And that was four hundred years ago and also now, and now, these little bodies on the bed beside me have never known war. And I kiss them and pray for forgiveness. And the girl and her rifle are so far away. 

And farther still are the men who gave it to her and the men who gave those men a reason to. This is no war of nations. This is a war of men, a few men, a very few men. And what is a nation anyway? Is it an idea that exists in the ethers or is it the very few men or is it like this image on my computer of the Russian people marching in the streets with their signs that say No War? And do they feel, I wonder, that this war is close or far away? 

This is a war on bodies, after all. Today, also today, I listened to a man, Texas governor, criminalize gender-affirming medical care and criminalize trans kids for existing and criminalize the adults who use their power to protect them. It is a war on bodies and in bodies. And the kids, the kids, their fear is not far away. The kids who are so close to themselves that they are themselves. And the invaders and this governor-man who are too far from their own bodies to know that when a person self-identifies and expresses their gender, they are articulating Existence itself. 

And I look down at my own body that has known invasion from men, a very few men, and has also known invading. And it is all not far away and so far away and I won’t let it be. 

So I pray. I pray to all the gods and that is also everyone. I pray to all the people, keep your Existence close. I pray to the Ukrainian people that at the end of this long day, you are in a bed, safe, so safe. I pray to the trans kids in Texas that the expression of your Existence is as it should be, a sacred choice. I pray to the hands. To my own, work and protect. To the ones laid across my collarbone, keep your hands on my collarbone. And to the Ukrainian girl on my computer, I see you and keep your hands on that rifle. 

And to the men with the hands around her neck and around trans kids' necks and around everyone’s necks, get your fucking hands off. It is no prayer, it is a plea: Why do you need that? Why do you need that? You don’t fucking need that. For the love of everything common, you don’t fucking need that. Get your fucking hands off.