July 18, 2023

what to love when you’re running out of things to love

Pick any landscape—a kitchen counter, a waiting room, that part of your body
you shield from photographs—and narrow the distance between you. At first,
the stains will monopolize your eye. Each blight and crack and overgrowth, 
a seismic disruption. If you can bear the stillness of not looking away, if you
step even closer, the contours will begin to lose their meaning. The noise 
of an old story will fade. New shapes will emerge, like petals after a hard rain.
I’m not saying you will desire, suddenly, the pits and pores of the world, 
or that your hands passing over every rough surface will feel fresh tenderness.
But you’ll notice your breathing has softened, your heart a door you can open
past the jambs. How there’s room for what you see, and everything you can’t.