sharp but useless

“Wife. The word bends like a soft branch in my mouth. I’ve learned not to choke on it by lying achingly still. The waves reach and reach for me over the black ocean. The tender white hands of children petting a large, harmless corpse.”

“Your presence, your warmth, our closeness, our understanding,”

“I’m not insisting that we be brimming with hope — it’s OK not to be optimistic. Buddhist teachings say, you know, feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out, so just be present… The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here, and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world — because it will not be healed without that. That [is] what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.”