Abide

When I no longer care 
about the world, let me 
sit on a rock perch where 
my hair can be  
                         combed by the wind.

When I no longer want to bind 
my breasts with cotton and drink 
from an orchard well, let me sleep 
in a room without clocks 
                         in the middle of a monsoon.

The days are full 
of horrors and lamentations,
nights with visions 
of banishment and exile with
                         no hope of return.

Yet deeper blue than the sky,
hydrangeas keep rewriting
a narrative of ordinary survival.
Their dry, petaled heads persist,
                         even in the absence of water.