i. how big is your grief today? how soft do her little grey fingers push against your spine? can you breathe past it, or is she deep in your mouth now; crushing the bird in your windpipe.

I send this in the aftermath. I never wrote the letter I said I would.  I’m sorry I didn’t call. A long time had passed and I was afraid of frostbite. I was afraid of reaching across the glacial silence to find no one  & you were right, in the end, your prayerful warnings all collected. I can’t collapse the meadows like I said I would learn how to. 

continually updated list of resources with things you can do to support black lives

“At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world. Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep - just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don’t do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life’s length to listening, and nothing happens.”

“I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”