I sit alone at the dinner table and my silence falls around me in a cloud of clarity; it is a soft silence, mutable, temporal - the furthest thing from an absolute.  I hear music and singing and the distant warmth of laughter and

suddenly

passionately

there is so much joy in my heart. 

and here is the wonder of joy for me: sorrows sown and woven do not fray, fires stoked high and angry burn all the same, and regrets, regrets are bitter dreams that haunt the tongue.  nothing gets easier.  so all these things

hands to hold

people to love

good food and song

aren’t they all the more precious?

in this silence, there is an echo, a second heart, a second love, the first love, and time flows in a stream, space conforms to the laws of stars and dark matter, but that echo has been the message in every bottle, in every sea since and still and ever to be.

time slips into my blood, as ancient as water and wine, and space is a golden lantern, aglow and lit with a candle where the suffering is the wax and my darkness the wick.  the greatest secret hidden in the folds of inescapable loneliness:

we are loved.