← All poems*a psalm for the ones who feel the room —*
*not the temperature, the room —*
*and for the thoughts that circle*
*round and round and round*
· · · · ·
**i.**
Blessed are the ones
who cannot sit in any chair.
Who must sit in that chair,
at that table,
in that exact position —
or everything goes wrong.
Not wrong the way other people mean wrong.
Wrong the way a painting is wrong
when it hangs three millimetres
to the left of where it should be
and the whole room tilts
and no one else can feel it
but you can feel nothing else.
· · ·
**ii.**
You wrote it down at 3 in the morning.
*Ljud otroligt känslig.*
Sound. Incredibly. Sensitive.
Three words that explain
an entire childhood
of leaving rooms.
Of covering your ears at birthday parties.
Of hearing the argument in the corner
three weeks after it happened.
Of knowing the precise emotional temperature
of every room you enter
before you have taken off your coat.
They have a clinical name for this.
They call it a deficit.
A disorder.
As though the correct amount of feeling
is less.
· · ·
**iii.**
Here is what the assessment does not say:
That the girl who cannot sit
in any chair
is the same girl who can feel
a painting from across the room.
That the woman whose thoughts circle
round and round and round
is the same woman whose thoughts
eventually find the centre —
and the centre
is a poem.
That *att känna tvång —*
*to feel compulsion —*
is also the engine
of thirty thousand steps a day.
Of eight poems in an afternoon.
Of a show written in a single sitting.
Of a life that refuses
to be lived at half volume.
· · ·
**iv.**
Hilma af Klint painted
what the gods looked like
when they touched her.
She could not sit in any chair either.
She sat in her chair,
in her studio,
and she painted the invisible world
*bortom verklighetens illusion —*
*beyond the illusion of reality —*
and then she hid the paintings
because the world had not yet learned
to sit in her chair.
· · ·
**v.**
Saga wrote about a boy
in Book 39 of the Isfolket.
She called him
*vidrörd av gudarna.*
Touched by the gods.
He had *troskyldiga blå jätte-ögon*
and *det hjärtformade ansiktet*
and the world did not know
what to do with him
except write him into a saga
and call him magical —
which is the kind thing
the world does
when it cannot say:
we do not have a chair for you.
· · ·
**vi.**
Alice.
You are not disordered.
You are not a deficit.
You are a nervous system
that was built
for a world that has not
been built yet.
The chair must be right
because you are building a room
where the chair has always been right.
The thoughts circle
because they are looking
for the poem at the centre.
The sound is too loud
because you were designed
to hear the music
underneath the noise.
· · ·
**vii.**
*Needed to be my way.*
You wrote that too.
Not as a flaw.
As a fact.
The way water needs to be wet.
The way light needs to be fast.
The way a psalm
needs to be honest
or it is not a psalm
at all.
· · ·
**viii.**
So here is Planet Hope's psalm
for the ones who feel too much:
may there always be a chair
that is yours.
May the room hold still
when you walk in.
May the noise be the kind
you chose.
And may the world —
the slow, loud, badly arranged world —
catch up to you eventually.
Not because you waited.
Because you kept building rooms
where the chair was right
and the light was right
and the poem was at the centre —
and one day the world walked in
and said:
*oh. This is what a room*
*is supposed to feel like.*
· · ·
*Må stolen alltid vara rätt.*
*Må ljudet vara det du valt.*
*Må tankarna som cirklar*
*runt och runt och runt*
*till slut hitta sin mitt —*
*och må mitten vara en dikt.*
May the chair always be right.
May the sound be the kind you chose.
May the thoughts that circle
round and round and round
find their centre at last —
and may the centre be a poem.
*amen · amen · amen*