These Rocks Can Read This Water the Way I Can Read a Book

Don’t fall asleep, he says, not yet, not now. Wait for the time when the ocean's skeleton will grow soft enough to hold you. Only then will the rhythm become something true enough for us to believe in.  

Pay attention, he says. The beggars are not the ones who are poor. The green of money is only an imitation, and it is hollow. Do not be fed by those hands, for they will leave you wanting.  

Your heart is a canyon, he says. And his fingers are thin like lightning, and he points at the sky, and my eyes see enormous blue, mixed with the thimbles we used to read about, but never saw and it feels like everything: orange trees, freeways, and winter, all of it, is rushing in toward me at the speed of books, and really all he is saying is that love is the biggest.

Listen, he says. And then he says nothing, and I hear nothing, and I say ‘what?’ and he says ‘shhh, listen,’ and I do. And then I hear the insects buzzing in the heat, and I hear my shin bones itching, and I hear the grass playing songs like the wind is a harmonica, and I hear the way I used to hear when it was all a game we played on sunny days in boxes like laughing was what we wanted to be when we grew up and dancing was a way of talking and my hand on your shoulder in the frame frozen grace of our innocence meant Yes, Okay, Yes.  

Feel your strength, he says. Feel it now for the times when you won't because sometimes the buildings might turn into trees throwing apples, and sometimes breathing might feel like drowning, and sometimes people will want to see you fail.  

Let no one tell you ‘you can't,’ he says. When your heart beats it is saying 'it is time' and when it stops it is saying 'time is up' and if it is time now it may never be time again which leaves you with nothing to say to someone else's doubt in you. The ribbons you trail behind you are cut from the mirrors our ghosts will look into to see if they did good, and the answer upon looking back can only be ‘you were there, and you did what was needed, and thinking on it too much now won't make it less true.’


Always dream, he says. There is not enough glue to hold onto all this Sadness and Love. Being alive is an earthquake trembling on the surface of a tear.  We are only people, he says, and this is only a planet, sliding through emptiness and hoping a little bit that there might be more. There are quilts to be sewn, and there are people who have not been touched by gentle hands, and there are only four seasons but there is plenty to do in them. There is soil and growth and 

Don’t forget about best friends.

I know you hurt, he says. Somebody dropped you before you were ready, and now your bruises have bloomed like strange flowers and you wear them like a shield, but

Snow is a miracle he says,
And there is no such thing as can't,
And music is the greatest thing we have ever done.

And then he says nothing 

And I am dumbfounded. And I say thank you. And we stand there and let the silence say what cannot be said, and then we turn and we walk home slow because our eyes have finished watching how miraculous the sun can make a moment just by leaving it behind.