Let’s dare to be ourselves, for we do that better than anyone else can.

- Shirley Briggs

indigo liquid
aimed at a page through a point
traces on fingers

When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

-Khalil Gibran

You say I don’t talk, don’t share,
feelings frozen over, in hibernation,
hermetic as the laden ice-covered branches
cutting you off from the core of who I am.

But the cold and slippery truth is
if I melt these icicles and
stand before you, naked and trembling,
I no longer could pretend to be your ideal,
conform to your projection of perfection,
and your rejection is more than I could bear.

I would become so very weightless and inconsequential
that you could blow me away
simply by the sigh of your indifference
like a snowflake in the wind and bitter cold,
disoriented and adrift in engulfing whiteness,
lost, like a million others.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

-Abraham Lincoln

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

-Robert Benchley

Rorschach in the sky
silver patterns—just look up
for inspiration

As I was driving home, a flock of blackbirds fell out of the sky. It was a diving swarm, a single ball of coordinated black spots bouncing against the gray clouds. They didn’t need to speak to know in which direction to go; they didn’t bump into each other even at their frenzied speed. Rather, they flowed like a torrential stream, pooling at choice points in the sky. They moved as one, a larger consciousness, a group of wandering nomads who already knew that they would arrive together at their ultimate destination, the journey together being more important than the endpoint.

I was open but not searching. They stole my breath away, and in an instant, I was plummeting through the skies with them, swooping, my heart in my throat, a smile in my eyes. They welcomed my spirit into their flock. I was soaring. We settled on the field. I was home.

You don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are.

Talmud