Author: Luisa A. Igloria

has tears in her eyes, from all the suffering

in the world. The Bodhisattva is supposed
to show me how to deal with all the pain

I also see, the suffering in my life and
in others' lives. But I can only have

empathy and compassion if I feel connected 
instead of detached, apprehend the exact 

shape of what hurts or is heavy. Not as idea 
or abstraction but as throb, constriction, 

a knot in the middle of my chest that keeps me 
awake through the night. What to do, what to do,

when we are asked to see things clearly 
for what they are, instead of clouded 

by judgment and the many illusions of desire? 
The Bodhisattva of compassion has decided 

to postpone her own transcendence into Nirvana, 
in order to help all sentient beings. Salt 

gathers at the corners of my eyes, perhaps 
even at nerve endings. Pay attention, she says; 

stay and hold the ache in place until 
it softens. Detachment isn't abandonment. 

It means letting the pain be pain 
while standing close and not looking away.

See: 
Orpheus, who learned 
too late that looking back 
can be fatal.
 
See: 
Plato, who gave us the tale of humans 
as originally whole, round with four 
arms, four legs, two faces. 

See: 
How the gods were shook by the thought 
of what could happen if these four-
limbed beings challenged them. 

See: 
How of course, after we were split in half 
like melons, even in bed side by side, each
half longed perennially for the other. 

See:
Sisyphus, who didn't start out 
doing it for cardio, but most
likely looked ripped.

See:
The grocery cart with one
bad wheel, barging away from the meat
and into the vegetable display.
 
See also:
Time, which doesn't make sense
however way you cut it, and yourself,
making sense where you can.

There are things I can do 
and things over which I have
no influence. I can mail care

packages and transfer funds, check 
in even if I don't get a response. 
That winter, a weight arrived 

uninvited and stayed. I know 
I can't erase the accumulation 
of hours the body has 

already lived— a long chain 
of hallways from whose windows 
you glimpsed a train 

whistling through the tracks, 
the frozen landscape. All I want 
for you is a normal life, 

by which I mean mornings that don't 
require courage, afternoons moving
forward without obstruction, 

nights when sleep doesn't need 
to be won by exhaustion. I scour
my world for words to hold

against its unforgivingness,
for words to lift without denying
the fires walked through, the wounds

and barbs. Since prayer is more  
than asking, is waiting, then I wait for 
the tender spots to show themselves 

again, for the drain to clear and water 
give itself so the spirit rinses even
just enough suffering from the day. 

The terrible trials still come. 
They haven't stopped. Weather 
that stays in place— days stacked 
like wet wool, nights that press 
on the ribs. Please let up already.
 
We're stripped down to nearly 
only the bones of our humanity. We
have to work so hard to even feel
capable of moving through the days.

My heart breaks for how much you
have to bear, as the rest of the world
blithely goes home to soft lamplight
and rest. It takes such work to coax
the soul to sit up straight in the body,
to convince it the music hasn't ended.
That it still has the capacity to dance.

Let today be the day, Lord. Send 
a sign that a flood of clear air 
is coming, that you won't begrudge 
the handful of coins in our hands. 
Give us mercy and a little hope. 
Our due at last. Fists unclasped. 

Did your father keep cash
      in a sock then slide that under
the mattress? and your mother, did she  
      keep bills in separate envelopes  
labeled food, water, light? Having lived 
      through the war, my parents knew 
the fear of losing everything, having 
      nothing but the kind of debt which has 
a habit of growing bigger while you sleep. 
      I must have formed my attitudes toward 
money from them: fear that the universe 
      could punish you for spending on frivolous
things instead of just the necessities— good  
      cheese rather than cheese spread, fruit 
rather than juice from concentrate.
      That vacation postponed for the nth
year in a row and perhaps forever, since
      the price of fuel is even more expensive
now. Our savvy friends talk about making
      their money work hard for them
while they sleep: a tool they say, used      
      well, frees you for longer stretches
you could fill with conversation, hobbies,
      or books and art. What is it worth
to work overtime without pay, catch
      only four hours of sleep a day
then fall asleep at the wheel? With every 
      paycheck, pay yourself first but set 
aside twenty percent for savings and debt 
      repayment. Clear accounts. Know 
what you have and where it goes, care for it 
      as you would an animal that remembers
its wild, fanged nature, but now will fetch,
      sit, and come when it is called.    

All of us travel here 
in the same way, in our
own time.

The body, breaking 
through the surface,
learns that such entry 
is never clean. 

What opens may not ever
return to its former shape.
At the moment it happens,
it's aided by gravity.

And the mind, too, moves
downward toward what 
palpably hurts. 

After, there is 
the loneliness of having 
been the doorway. You are
the portal through which more 
than language has passed.

You can't take anything
back. You can call it 
devotion or you can 
call it regret. 

But it isn't by accident
that the areola's soft 
bluish flesh connects 
magnetically 

to that ocean in whose depths 
one could drown, cresting
the waves of pleasure. 

Counting, like in the tales
where girls are given impossible
tasks to numb their fingers and hearts— 
Separate grain from pebbles by nightfall, 
sew seven shirts without speaking a word 
for seven years. Silence itself, part 
of the spell: a clause in a contract 
you don't even remember having signed 
in blood or ink. Only in those stories
are there helpers: talking mice, 
birds, ants, meaning belief 
in the kindness of nature which 
somehow bends toward you because 
it intuits an injustice. But I want 
to know how the curse can be broken, 
how the loop of bad luck can be severed 
once and for all, not just reversed. 
I want to drop this needle and 
burn this loom, see my loves 
emerge out of the forest or 
soften from stone back into flesh. 
Let whatever I may have mislaid 
be suddenly found in the corner 
of a coat pocket, the toe of a shoe.  

Feeling slightly out of alignment with
the world, I stop at the grocery store 
looking for something to nudge me back 
onto the road of purpose I drive each 
day— home to work, work to home. I think 
of getting flowers, but would that be  
admitting something I can't say aloud? 
In there, the sunflowers are smaller 
than I remember: heads disheveled 
under LED lights, faces turned nowhere 
in particular. Have they, too, forgotten 
how to follow the sun? There's not one 
particular cause for blame— not the hike 
in oil prices nor the increasingly infertile 
soil from climate change, not the store 
and the unpredictability of supply and demand. 
Once, the hills of my childhood were dotted 
with the same yellow blooms. Their brightness 
reflected a light I never questioned, as if 
it would always be there, forgiving me 
everything before I even thought to say
what for. I try to think of that light again 
here, and in the end I leave the flowers 
with their price tags exactly where they are. 
I walk back into my day, hands empty 
of everything but this honesty.   

I would too, if I were lonely
and if I were a god. I'd invent

a snack like this: Lonely God
Potato Twists, red and yellow 

and foil-wrapped among the shrimp 
chips and Boy Bawang in the Asian 

grocery. Also, what's not to love
about a plot twist after years of yawn 

and meh? Remember Chubby 
Checker in the '60s, who hit 

number one on the Billboard Hot 
100 not once but twice? Suddenly 

everyone was dancing in place, 
swiveling their hips, having 

a good time: Come on baby... and go
like this. But in 1962, in Buffalo, 

New York, a bishop saw only lewdness 
in these gyrations and banned them— 

which only made the Twist more popular. 
Joy doesn't need permission. It catches on

like contagion. Any lonely god would want 
to feel loosed from the world's grip 

sometimes. As for the chips, of course 
I buy them. I tear the packet open with 

my hands— each salty crunch loud as 
the sound of a rule breaking somewhere.
 

wills and directives— if this,  

then that. If we're lucky, or
not. Who benefits from certain

actions? Who gains from my love 
of bathing in sunlight, loses

from my habit of pulling up weeds 
with bare hands? I know the cost

of not putting things in order. 
I also know also how impossible 

it is to itemize assets vs. debts,
time spent vs. time held against

future use. Finally, I'm learning
to sort the mail as soon as it

comes, to believe in dreams 
as dreams instead of prophecy—

one springs from the mind
of what can be, and the other

from the mind of what seems
to know what can't be known.