Kate Tempest poem HOLD YOUR OWN
When time pulls lives apart Hold your own When everything is fluid, and when nothing can be known with any certainty Hold your own Hold it 'til you feel it there As dark, and dense, and wet as earth As vast, and bright, and sweet as air When all there is Is knowing that you feel what you are feeling Hold your own Ask your hands to know the things they hold I know the days are reeling past in such squealing blasts But stop for breath and you will know it's yours Swaying like an open door when storms are coming Hold Time is an onslaught Love is a mission We work for vocation until In remission We wish we'd had patience and given more time to our children
Feel each decision that you make Make it, hold it Hold your own Hold your lovers Hold their hands Hold their breasts in your hands, like your hands were their bras Hold their face in your palms like a prayer Hold them all night, feel them hold back Don't hold back Hold your own Every pain Every grievance Every stab of shame Every day spent with a demon in your brain giving chase Hold it Know the wolves that hunt you In time, they will be the dogs that bring your slippers Love them right and you will feel them kiss you when they come to bite Hhot snouts digging out your cuddles with their bloody muzzles Hold Nothing you can buy will ever make you more whole This whole thing thrives on us feeling always incomplete And it is why we will search for happiness in whatever thing it is we crave in the moment And it is why we can never really find it there It is why you will sit there with the lover that you fought for In the car you sweated years to buy Wearing the ring you dreamed of all your life And some part of you will still be unsure that this is what you really want Stop craving Hold your own But if you're satisfied with where you're at, with who you are You won't need to buy new make-up, or new outfits, or new pots and pans To cook new exciting recipes For new exciting people To make yourself feel like the new exciting person, you think you're supposed to be Happiness, the brand, is not happiness We are smarter than they think we are They take us all for idiots But that's their problem When we behave like idiots It becomes our problem So hold your own Breathe deep on a freezing beach Taste the salt of friendship Notice the movement of a stranger Hold your own And let it be Catching
