How Alive I am Willing To Be
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Aliveness is not an accident.
It is a consent.
A decision made daily
at the threshold
between comfort and consequence.
I have learned this:
life does not ask politely.
It offers itself in increments—
an open door,
a risk disguised as invitation,
a moment that will close
whether or not I step through.
To live is to agree
to sensation.
To let wonder bruise you.
To let grief rearrange you.
To accept that intensity
is the price of presence
and pay it anyway.
There are safer ways to exist.
Muted ways.
Life lived at a careful remove,
where nothing costs much
because nothing is truly touched.
I know those rooms.
I have furnished them before.
But I am no longer interested
in survival alone.
I am interested in immersion.
In days that leave fingerprints.
In laughter that interrupts breath.
In movement that reminds the body
it was made for more
than avoidance.
I want the full weather of it—
the sharp mornings,
the unrepeatable afternoons,
the nights that insist
I stay awake long enough
to feel something undeniable.
This is the choice:
how awake I am willing to be.
How much joy I will allow
before fear intervenes.
How much beauty I will stand
before instinct tells me
to look away.
Because aliveness requires courage—
not the loud kind,
but the steady refusal
to numb what hurts
and miss what heals.
I am choosing the ache
that comes with expansion.
The fatigue that follows curiosity.
The risk of loving this life
without a guarantee
it will love me back gently.
I will say yes
more often than is efficient.
I will let myself be altered
by places,
by people,
by the audacity of wanting
more than ease.
This is my measure now—
not how little I can feel
and still function,
but how fully I can inhabit
this singular, unrepeatable body
before time closes its hand.
I am willing
to be unmistakably alive.
And that willingness—
that fierce, deliberate openness—
is the most honest thing
I have ever chosen.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
