7.23.26

Sometimes you encounter a silence so deep and wide, you fall all the way in. Recently there has been a shortage of memory, so I settle for the sensation of the sunlight on my skin. It's warm and somehow that makes me shiver. I'll be 30 years old soon. When my mother was 30 she had two small children. When my father was 30 he was staring down cancer. Last year, in front of two monks, I cried. One monk sat a bit further away from me, listening but with a sense of distance between us. The other monk looked me in the eyes, with tears in his own. I spoke of the world breaking my heart. Me too, he had said, me too. Then he told me: when you first came in here, I saw all these dark clouds around your head, but now I see. You are the sun. 

What is to happen to the listeners of the world? What will happen to the poets and the children, whose job is to stop, wait and listen? 

Sometimes we understand ourselves so deeply we don't understand at all. The sunlight is receding now, so quickly. I still feel cold, so -- forgive me --now I will turn to face it.