Askesis

It began in a room like this. I was at first upright, I knew the walls and loved them; no voice challenged that estimation or demanded my revision or sacrifice. I knew every wall; it began with music. The keys were the teeth of the infinite lock. My hands were the keys to every door; I was there. Of course it goes wrong for everyone, doesn’t it? Unravels, counting down, skyward. I studied the film. A practice of negation I’ve learned should be systematic, intentional, temporary.

Though one manual advised even periods of silence I had been so cloaked in it that when the harsh light ripped open a bird (frost) on a walk, from nowhere—that was poetry, that was the god’s gift. How I wish I knew then it could be pure, as everything is, unearned & pure, like dawn—could be the pearl this field encloses. That it was and is every thing, my body, the voice saying you don’t have to write, don’t have to revisit the failed homes, the rooms, the variously wrong devotions & decadences, the waves you grasped rather than swimming. Saying, whoever you are, it’s mercy.