By Amanda Ford

It requires a certain strange courage to lie on public pavement and place rose petals upon your eyelids. The courage to honor expression no matter how obscure, to surrender to inclination like lust. It is the sort of courage that answers when stirrings call.

You can rush it, hurried, hoping nobody catches you catching the shot. “What if they see me?”

Or you can move at the correct speed, the presence pace, savoring the ephemeral silk of the fallen petals, appreciating all pokes from all pebbles.

“Because: They will see you. Eventually.”

If you are a person of any dimension, of any contradiction, of any curiosity, of any dark desire, of any character…

If you are more than a blinded sheep…

If you are, you will be caught doing something strange. They will see you and they will wonder, “What is she doing?”

It’s none of their business what you choose to do.

It’s none of your business what they think of you.

Mind your own business, this: What do you think of you?

It requires a certain strange courage to stop making sense of things. Some senses are nonsense, and it is courage to go with those.

You do what you must because you cannot not. That is why you must.

Like in the morning when you cannot not bury your head in his chest. You would never not, except when you are mad at him and then you always regret it.

It requires a certain strange courage to walk upright upon this earth, to try to do a little better than before, do a little better to others than what was done to you.

“It requires courage to accept the ordinary humanity that is you. You are normal, but if you are brave, you can love yourself anyway.”

Besides, it is so obvious, so boring, so gross to strive to be special, to be above everybody else.

Be ordinary and strange and mind your own business.