April is celebrated as both poetry month and as earth month. This week in honor of the

earth and the language we use to describe and understand it, the slowdown is collaborating

with wonder media networks as she rises. It brings together poems from artists throughout

the US and territories that depict the effect of climate change on their home and their

people, centering native voices and women of color as she rises, personalizes the elusive

magnitude of climate change. Today's poem is by one of the poets featured on Ashi

Rises. I'm Italy Mone and this is the slowdown. I remember once sitting at a bar in my

twenties and realizing how easily I could give my life away to oblivion. It wasn't even

the idea of drinking necessarily, but the idea of being filled up, giving into that constant

filling the way of avoiding the big empty. All of it made sense to me. I have learned

throughout my life to ask myself, what is it that I really need when I'm reaching for

something, whether it's food or booze or sugar? And sometimes the answer is obvious, like

a hug or to cry or to make art. And sometimes it's more ethereal. What I need then is to escape

for a brief second, escape from this mind, this body, this earth bound self. And at times,

I give into that need and at times I don't. But the awareness is there. I'm interested

in how we discover our own intentions and our own desires. I had a friend who once

who operated from a place of scarcity all the time. Nothing you could give could fill

her up. Nothing she could obtain could fill her up. Not success, not love, not kindness.

And I realized that if I kept giving and giving in hopes that someday she would be satisfied,

I would be depleted and she would still not be full. I have always cared for this person,

but I recognize myself and her, the part of me that desires endlessly, that once everything

and once it now and when I have it, I want more. It's part of all of us. Today's poem

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