Every morning I plant bare feet on this hardwood floor and step surely into my kitchen, into a day of scrambled eggs, giggling children, whole hearts and unbroken bones. The truth of good food and warm blankets and loved ones home for dinner gushes continually from a well of beauty and abundance.
Yet in a small dark cave, beneath this spring is a pale blue eel. No one likes to look at the eel. Behind tiny jagged teeth he quietly holds the other truths: The house may burn. Mutant cells may bloom in my child’s bones. I might not see the light in time. Some other country’s bullets may pierce the veil between Us and Them.
Then we’d all be hungry and scared but we’d still breathe. The earth would rotate again, and then again. Every day a new yellow light would fill the shadows behind dumpsters and churches--despite our pain or plans. We would wake again and then again and one day we’d smile quietly at strangers; even as we are those strangers wandering hand in hand through a broken world.
And even if the breath staggering from my lungs is ragged and faint, it’s just breath. And it’s just a body. And today is just a little packet of time in which we happen to be aware of Time.
And yes, my heart will break, over and over. And so will yours. But these brilliant muscles will beat faithfully as we heal. Such a glorious burden to be self aware, to be sentient little animals.
This would be so much easier if I were a rock, if you were a tree, if the tickling on my shoulders was only sweat evaporating, rather than a million tiny antennae straining, listening with delicious anxiety for any thing about me me me me me me.
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