As someone who likes to connect through words and stories, I get really frustrated when I cannot find words for a situation. In all honesty, I like for words to fix things. I struggled in college with ending my personal essays in neat endings, a metaphorical bow. Stories don't always have neat endings or any resolution at all.
Today, knowing that my friends are suffering an unthinkable loss, I can't find words that make sense let alone words that make anything better. I'm ill prepared for death, but death still comes.
In place of my words, I found a few that comfort me when I don't have answers.
----
Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found gain after two hundred years....
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me....
I am food on the prisoner's plate....
I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills....
I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden....
I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge....
I am the heart contracted by joy...
the longest hair, white
before the rest....
I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow....
I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit....
I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name....
