by MJ Atamian

Mother Pore

MJ Atamian | JAN 2026 | Issue 50

I try to keep my eyes closed—to sink into my own body—but I can’t help looking at all the other bodies moving around me. The shapes and outlines bending, buckling, on the verge of bursting. My feet are bare, the floor is firm. Sweat drips from every inch of me—from every inch of us all. It mixes beneath and above us, around and in us. We become a hive—one pulsing being breathing and dripping, expanding and contracting. We are together as single beings but we are also the individual parts of a mass movement.

It happens many times over the week, but I tend to go on Saturdays when the lights are the lowest and everything feels most intimate. I like to get lost, both in myself and in everyone else. I’ll never forget my first time. I had no idea what to expect; I still don’t always know what to expect in form, but I know what to expect in feeling. A boiling release, threatening to bubble over and then a bubbling over without warning, my entire shape melting outside the lines of what I know. An aperture expanding, a single mother pore opening, opening, opening until there is no longer an edge, only eternity. A constellation-making of my sex, my body, my desire, and all the roots that reach back into source. Words and images hum and vibrate up and through me and down and out of me, turning what I know of myself on its head. Come, come, a being deep within tells me, there is more to know about you, about the body in front of you and the one behind you, about everything.

I sometimes wonder what it feels like for the souls who share the room with me. What’s happening in their bodies, big and small, tight and jiggly, confident and masquerading until it works? They must feel this rush, this release because they all keep coming back, bringing more and others with them. I work hard not to be solipsistic—solipsism can be slippery—but how could anyone not turn into a gushing rush of glee, of tears mixed with sweat screaming without words, I am here, my god, I am, I am. For some, it may just be an endorphin high, a social gulp. There’s just no way that’s all it is, though. I feel it in the space we share and the shapes we make. We are building something together.

Our queen bee ushers us into more, into bigger, melting with time as she moves, grinding and groaning. We follow suit, enamored by what we didn’t know was allowed. Some of us are in tears, some of us are yelping. All of us are soaked in whatever needs to crawl out of us. Heat becomes a valve—the higher and harder we push, the higher and harder we move. We think we can’t stand it—that we’ve reached our limit—but our limits left long ago when we stopped remembering how to be and started to sink into what has always been.

I cried my first time because the memories wouldn’t stop. One by one, they chased me, swirling and merging until they tipped me into grief. The grief of desire unmet, withheld, disconnected from. I had to walk away, find a place in the corner to catch my breath and remember without interruption, remember without dropping the dams of control and repression. I still cry, but I no longer need to walk away. I give it over to my guides—the music, my body—and let what comes, come.

It takes time to transition from the world out there to the portal in here. The first beats are awkward. We fumble around each other, anxious about being perceived as too eager, too uninhibited, too desperate. With time and memory, we loosen, our bodies remembering what to do. Experience doesn’t matter because skill isn’t real here. We come to get free, to access something greater than any of us—something that drips slick and serpent-like down our lips, our shoulders, our legs, our ankles. We take it all up to the sky, past the blue, pink, and purple lights that render the room a salacious secret and down to the floor, past the boards and concrete and into the guts of it all, the bile of our planet’s core sloshing in time with us. We dip our hips and grab each other (consensually) when invited, our hands slipping on each other’s liquid skin. Sometimes we clap in unison, ascending to a plane of co-existence, the sound of bodies moving in concert, electric and ancient. I used to be embarrassed byof collective clapping, but now I weep.

Sometimes, the sound of dogs barking from the care center next door finds its way into lulls in the music. It is feral and raw. We are all in heat. We are all begging for attention, begging to belong. Notice me, notice us.

When we have almost hit our limit, we shift the energy. Our bodies collapse on the floor and we are supine, hearts pounding, limbs interwoven. Our breath is hot, and in stillness, our individual cadences sink into one rhythm. The churning we’ve created, the high we’ve climbed to rushes through our veins and organs, our cells and atoms—the stuff of us, and we allow. With this sacred invitation, we allow, allow, allow in a world that often says no, no, no.

With time, we rise again, resuming our places, picking up where we left off, our hive pulse never having stopped. We think we have nothing left to give, but our energy rises and roils and the heat resumes. Our feet tap, our arms flail, our hair loosens. We are lovers in communion, in community. We are bodies ignited. We are souls set free. We are dancing.

MJ Atamian is a queer, disabled, recovering educator who will likely be recovering in perpetuity. Her experiments in reverent irreverence and irreverent reverence can be found on her Substack, You Illegible Thing. She is working on a book about making her body hers—a revelation that came in dance.