Endless summer
“The morning light snuck in on us through the window...”
Endless summer
The morning light snuck in on us through the window
Ripping pink seams along the edges of clouds.
We sat around the coffee table laughing and sipping mint tea,
And when I looked back up, the light had grown
Into the harsh glare of the day, bearing down on the concrete alleyway.
We knew that we wouldn’t be together again
Like this: a mix of old and new friends
Dancing together all night, drinking together, desperately straddling 30.
When I woke later in my room, it was almost afternoon.
I made some coffee and finally boiled the chicken bones I’d been freezing,
Shaking them from the Ziploc bag into the pressure cooker,
Smoldering the marrow into a hot, salty broth.
I opened my laptop to find
Hunger, rubble, human acts.
And then I ran. I ran with nothing in my pockets,
Feeling faraway from the people I passed,
And as I entered the gates of Greenwood Cemetery,
My mind expanded into the foliage.
I climbed Battle Hill, where statues of soldiers stood guarding
An obelisk at the highest point in Brooklyn.
There were three blackbirds on the grass,
And I saw them fly away against the Manhattan skyline.
I felt for a second—no, I knew—that the creatures of this world
Fly alone, that no one steers anyone else into heaven
Or hell.
A fleeting feeling, soon overgrown.
Anyway, all of this is to say
That I looked at some blackbirds for awhile
And watched them fly away.
✤
Brightly, the ferryman’s smile lit up; softly, he touched Siddhartha’s arm and said: “Ask the river about it, my friend! Hear it laugh about it! Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? … Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? Were his father’s religious devotion, his teacher’s warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.”
—The ferryman’s speech in Siddhartha
This piece reminds of a time when I went back to my childhood room for the first time after I got married. Your writing somehow brings up all the feelings I had back then. It's wonderful.