Unutterably Soft

Moments of clarity often come at times when you don't expect them. Not only that, they come about things which you don't expect to take notice of until a curtain is drawn and you look up and say, "Oh."

In a time when breathing seems a chore and focusing is something that I used to do, Sandeep gave me a flower. It smells so sweet. A rose sent from the editors of this story who, looking down, think, "Hey, this girl might lose it. Let's sweeten the deal. " Over the past few weeks, Sandeep has been one of the main contributing factors to my continued tolerance of the confusion that has reigned supreme. And she gave me this rose. It smelled so good. And it was so soft. I walked around with it for the rest of the day; I couldn't very well just leave it somewhere. Maybe part of the attraction of flowers is that they are so fleeting. If you are overly-amorous with a flower, it's stem breaks or it's petals bruise. And even if you're ever-so-careful, it doesn't last for long. And you can only smell it when you inhale. You're denied that pleasure when exhaling. Or when you forget to breathe.

So there I was, walking around holding this rose, smelling it and better, feeling it. Flowers smell good, this we know. But they feel like velvet and butter and cinnamon and sugar. How do we forget this? Drifting from class to class, petting myself with my rose, I realized why women in those old portraits always hold the flowers right up to their faces; it's because they're so soft. I'll bet that when you're sitting for days on end for a portrait, you need a reminder of life and sweetness and light. And John Berger and I thought all along that these ladies were just positioning themselves in the most alluring and demure position for the male viewer. Shame on us.

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Cracked open, wind-burned, anxiously beating in the hopes of finding some thing some end. That’s not what’s meant to be, but still it beats with ravenous desperation. But under the covers in the darkness, the drum continues, magnified in an amphitheater where you are the giantess, your nose brushing the velvety sky, your eyes the stars. For all your grandness, you quiver. Beating becomes a hum, rousing sleeping birds from their nests to stare blearily at the sky and snuggling down deeper to thwart the cool and loneliness from which you have no shelter. Warm or cold hardly matters, because fear lights the night on fire and all that is seen exists behind eyes, between the hum.

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There are times when I think to myself, 'My heart hurts.' The grownup in my mind looks at the 4-year-old in my mind, right into her eyes, and asks, 'What do you mean?' I can't answer. Not in terms I'm accustomed to using. 'I feel it in my heart, and in my belly. They're all twisted up and sad.' What advice does the grownup give the kid?Hmmm.

'I know how you feel, I feel that way sometimes too.'

'Try breathing really deeply, and letting it all go.'

'Do you want some hot chocolate?'