Daniel - Ever Hoping Yes [Video] - The Good Men Project

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Daniel, performing at Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, MN.

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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:02
– Sure as my own name I have learned the work of alchemy.
0:06
For what other name exists for magic
0:08
that transmutes pain to light.
0:10
I knew waning as a synonym for survival
0:13
which is an easy enough metaphor for endurance.
0:17
I recall each night beneath a moon
0:19
where I tilled my body for another’s
0:21
despite my refusal.
0:22
Often, I made yes my first choice
0:25
because it was all I was allowed.
0:28
The world has seen more wilt than bloom from me
0:31
and so I know better now.
0:33
You can’t unstitch the story from behind a wound.
0:36
All you can do is dress it.
0:38
I need not tell the story behind the pain to know
0:41
I got to the ending of it.
0:43
When I say submission is the most powerful act
0:46
I’ve ever committed, I’m not just in trauma
0:49
and the close of reclamation.
0:51
I’m saying I have no further interest in withering.
0:54
What defiance is greater than to find
0:57
spring in the middle of winter.
1:00
I’ve known too many hands that took pieces of me
1:02
thinking I’d not want them back when they were done.
1:06
I know which words are synonymous with permission.
1:09
I just never knew how to glory in them.
1:13
There is no greater agony than an untold story
1:15
than allowing me the one about submission born.
1:18
Not from the absence of safety but the presence of it.
1:21
I asked to tell a story and so now here it is.
1:25
In one kiss, he puts himself in my lap.
1:29
All heat-seeking mouth and legs akimbo in another.
1:32
I learn a moon is just a chunk of planet
1:34
yearning for all it left behind in another.
1:37
He’s bright and alive and brimming with joy
1:40
and he doesn’t see me cry.
1:42
For if any part of this hurts,
1:44
it is only because he asks for it too.
1:46
How he says, “please.”
1:47
And I say, “yes.”
1:49
And he says, “more.”
1:50
And I say, “yes” and he says, “thank-you.”
1:52
And I say, “yes.”
1:53
And y’all when I say I am so damn careful with him
1:57
I mean I see everything I have always deserved.
2:00
I grieve the boy who was buried in a dark room.
2:03
I cheer the boy who dug himself out,
2:05
who looked in the face of trauma
2:06
and believed he’d be there waiting
2:08
on the other side of winter because I deserve submission
2:12
without dressing it in survival first,
2:14
because I deserve to feel safe and adored
2:17
and my submission all small and powerful and giving at once
2:21
because the magic isn’t that I said, “yes.”
2:24
It’s that I kept saying “yes”
2:26
when yes was not the only option.
2:28
If there be craters, they are but open plots
2:31
waiting for spring, and isn’t that the most magical thing,
2:35
that in the face of everything,
2:36
trauma could not take from me, there I am.
2:39
And what better proof exists to show,
2:42
not that I have survived but that there is anything
2:44
but wilt to be found here.
2:46
That I’m right there.
2:48
That I’m right here.
2:49
There I am, there I am, there I am.
2:54
(crowd applauding)
2:56
(crowd cheering)

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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