And then it was her turn to know something unsaid.  When it happened, her body sank into the bottomless earth with its unsupportable anguish, something in the way a man pulls you toward him and pins you down, the pace of it, the hurry or delay shows you where he has some other woman’s smiling arms, some thighs, some sweetness somewhere, not here.  This knowing without being told is agony.  Your eyelids and every part of your body heats up or freezes and then a desperate churning comes and goes, comes and goes, deep in your stomach where your desire suddenly clots like blood and succumbs to the memory of something unwitnessed, and some other woman’s desiring arms, her breasts heaving forward to his chest which you thought only you knew and spread your fingers on, guarding each special promise and his name on your tongue like a redeeming phrase, instead, the memory of another woman’s careless laughter as she pulls a blouse over her head and kicks her shoes way under the bed, another woman close to his collarbone and resting her chin there while he presses her down, and her lips touching the edge of his earlobe, feeling his hands knitted together under her back, binding her in a tight circle over her willing hips and his hands dropping down to find the softest part of her, quickening his excitement so that he is sliding way down and touching her and she lifts and shifts her whole wailing body forward and he pulls her up toward himself and can reach her innermost part then holding and holding her body right there where the taste of her, the feel of her, is like tomorrow…his voice in another woman’s ear whispering the goodness and wordless mystery of it…the wanting of her…the feel of this.  Knowing this.  He pulls both her legs right round his body and she locks him down and drops the heel of her foot in the middle of his back and he wonders if he can wait any longer to savor this, to feel it beyond this suspended fraction of time which he knows will end, just slightly longer than this, longer, before he touches some solid ground.  Some strange woman’s solid ground, not your own.  He whispers in her ear what he will, and names her, gives a name to each part of her welcoming self, gives her all the names you found together.  Knowing this, that he could place his beautiful slim hands somewhere else but here, breathe in that ecstasy somewhere else but here, entangle his breathing with somebody else’s breathing but not this breathing and this body, and be able to look shamelessly into this stranger’s eyes when his hips are full and satisfied, knees, the thought of all this is too much like a slow death and the tongue grows heavy as lead, and the knocking way up in the roof of the mouth will not stop till something else gives in, some window opens or the stars all fall from the sky.  And another name has to be found for that ache where the desire used to be and your eyes are just open with nothing but dismay, then the blood starts pumping from your heels rising up to your head louder than anything and deaf with the endless sorrow of it, deaf to all the world but the blood flowing upward and downward and separating your core, the gist of you, strand after strand, and it is no longer you lying there under this body but some other body, and you wonder at the purpose of being alive and so unchosen, so unspecial, so forgotten, so dead, and if you are so dead why are you breathing on and on in this insatiable manner, unable to command your body to stop breathing because yes, you know how to do that, to hold your breath tight like a fist, instead everything is beating loudly just to remind you how truly alive you are, how trapped in all the minute details of living, your knees bending and folding away, your elbow breaking, and your mind kneading its memories.

--Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning

A small man with a long beard wearing a white hat and tunic stopped me. “Do you want to see something?” he asked and pointed out the window to the ledge where two baby pigeons were nesting. “I’ve been watching them for the past couple of weeks. They just hatched.” I looked more closely at the two baby birds nestled together. “I just thought I’d tell you,” he said, “because most people just walk by and never notice them.”

IF EVERYTHING HAPPENS THAT CAN'T BE DONE - e.e. cummings


if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)

so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one