Neither Penance nor Gift

It is morning - can we say it is the last morning ever? Yesterday rain fell unexpectedly. Not every question is meant to be answered, yet every body can be reconfigured in the body of another, itself a kind of answer. My favorite letter is one of the letters Denise sent me from England, which I threw away decades ago, completely failing to understand the laws of love and perception. Open windows at night deep into October, pulling the comforter tighter. Lean in or out, fine, but don't leave. Blessing acquires the nature of a toad in the garden - something I don't understand, something that frightens me, something that's hard to talk about (unless you're allowed to fake some parts). I cobbled together a mythology in childhood - horses, witches, prisms, loss - and have not yet managed to decode or decouple from it. Dad's thing for trucks, a symbol of what we could never find a way to share about meaningfully. Watch your step! Chrisoula comes into the hayloft, a center that is neither penance nor gift, but the the familiar getting more so all the time. Only fools ask "and then what?"