The Weight of Unknowable Alteration

Under broken moonlight, always-already.

The fatality of summer shouldn't matter, yet we interfere.

Water / prune / harvest.
Love / look / write.

The dog wants to go running with me but it is too hot for too long. She cries in the outset and later curls into herself like a cinnamon roll when I return.

Lately, apples and their seeds. One's fingerprints on what is thrown away or cast aside matters. The vision or touch or hearing of a thing transfers a weight of unknowable alteration. In this awareness, the witness loses herself and becomes. This-ness. Then, what need is there of God?

All night long, a steady hardiness pushes the rain. A turkey and pepper jack cheese sandwich at 3 a.m. - I'm not always vegan. Not following the rules does not make one reckless. In this way the night veil is instructive. Is it even possible to touch by accident?

Morning remains dark and rain strikes metal eaves like an erratic tympani. The room of windows is a harbor whereby I can see and hear and smell the dampened fusion of nature and humanity. Kyle has placed a Tibetan singing bowl in the room – a surprise donation of that which he no longer needs. I am bewitched by it and open a full-hearted portal. My wedding ring disturbs the vibration of the bowl. 

I remove it.

Prayers for peace erupt out of Kenya because it is election time again. Day to day, the memory of the 2007 post election horrors no longer finds me. But those of us who endured arrive instantly when the pleas and fear and heightened vigilance soaks the airwaves. I do not pray but easily slip back into the reverberations of automatic weapons and machetes and screams in the night.

Waiting was the most terrifying; for when the mobs breached the silence, it was time to flee or hide or fortify. When tear gas exploded it was time to run. When gasoline and food and water and cell phone air time was cut off, it was time to conserve. When severed body parts mingled with mud and sewage and blood, it was time to vomit and grieve.

But when there is silence, nothing can force the blackness of war out of room.

There are four boys who live behind the privacy fence in our backyard. They've built a citadel with roofing and zip lines and lookout towers, all taller than our one-story house. Their ninja warrior course is in use well into the night, and they shoot Airsoft guns for hours and hours that replicate AK-47s.

They play at war. Their father is proud. And the mother yells at the boys from some inner room to include their baby sister.

Pray if you want. But somewhere along the line your god told you that all of this was okay.

Midmorning the rain slows beyond a hush. Kenyans are voting and waiting. And I am going outside to sweep overshot Airsoft pellets off my rotting deck.