Labia

A symbol of beauty and power.

Welcome to Love + Travel, or welcome back if you’ve got the lay of the land.

This week brought with it the midpoint of summer and lots of rain. It seems like nature wanted to ride the wave of a palette cleanse, too.

I’ll return next week and pick back up with the remainder of the 13 Weeks of Adventure, but for now, enjoy Week 6—World Spa and the rest of my work, here.

Today, I offer you a musing on flowers.

All my love,

RL

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We give flowers hoping they reveal something about us—our ability to nurture life, to care for and deliver delicate things. By noticing something so tender and presenting it unharmed, we distinguish ourselves from creatures that, with blind indifference, would trample it underfoot. This recognition of its worthiness to be safeguarded becomes a symbol of our own tenderness. As the saying goes, 'it takes one to know one.' Flowers, then, become a projection of our ability to see beauty in our actions, elevating them beyond what they truly are—a reproductive system with stunning labia.

Flowers are so central in our culture that they’re one of the few things shared alongside food in birth and death. The story of flowers is the story of human life. Petals are plucked to determine requited love, and edible versions are added to our food.  Blooms adorn our wrists and breast pockets on special occasions, and they find their way into our beauty products and routines. Yet, they remain ornamental—gathered, presented, and ogled but seldom touched. They are perched on display, isolated, and admired until their demise. And when they wilt the spot of their decay is wiped clean. With the pass of a damp cloth, side tables and vanities are unsullied, of fallen, crinkled petals and the occasional dusting of pollen. Vessels are emptied, and the water is refilled with a new bounty, each as beautiful as the last.

I know petals of many kinds. They vary in size, color, and shape, yet all share a soft texture and are sensitive to the touch. When dew gathers, moisture dribbles from silky folds, each providing suppleness for the intricacies within. We tend to equate soft with weak, but have you ever seen rose petals after a downpour? Leftover raindrops shine like jewels, balancing on crimson velvet.  Flowers affirm it is not only possible to survive the storm but sparkle in the aftermath. 

The similarities between flesh and floral petals are striking, although only one has a mouth to dissent and hands capable of forming a fist.  Yet, humanity does not spare flesh petals from being treated like ornaments. To those with power, whether individuals or governments, they’re viewed no differently than the botanical kind. Perhaps that’s why they believe we won’t see that their pedestals are prisons or recognize their hypocrisy on selfhood sweeps indifferently over the bodies that carry life itself.  

Creating life is the closest a mortal can come to being a god. And for those who are both insecure and lacking the capacity, the next best thing is seeking to control that power.  For in controlling the creation of life, they think they can control life itself.

However, what the neurotic could never understand is there’s an exchange for being so powerful.

Nature requires sacrifice to wield its might.
In the creation of life there is the giving of life.
The giving of cell and sweat and blood and womb.  
An offering of mammary and the sagging of flesh.
There’s tissue and tears and the shedding of hair.

Life demands the entirety of one’s being to bring forth new life—a height those obsessed with possession can never reach. They know nothing of offering the most delicate parts of themselves for the sake of another. They would be startled by the fuzzy legs of a bee or the pulse of a hummingbird's wings.  They would crumble under the weight of a dragonfly at rest.  Life deals in gifts. To access its majesty, you first have to meet its depths.

There’s a persistent effort to convince those with labia that their power is too much for them, that they shouldn’t trust themselves, and to view their existence as frail. But you cannot convince a flower it belongs in a vase when it knows the freedom of the field. It dances in the heat of the day and relishes the chill of the night. When words like 'sanctity,' 'purity,' and 'virtue' fail to persuade, a blade is drawn across its most vulnerable part in the name of 'keeping it safe.' What was once natural is now staged. Integrity is replaced by a hollow ivory vessel.

True power encourages all life around it to bloom – as rain falls, it wets both the weed and the oak; the sun doesn’t shine on only a select few.  Power is not something that can be plucked or partitioned into meager bites. It requires staying in touch with nature, never departing from one’s roots.  It’s about embracing the wind, the frost, and the mist, and as storms rise and recede, we’ll shine in the light, marveling at what we truly are—powerful beings with stunning labia.

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