Darkness settles: the swarm
of mosquitos swells around
silhouettes, a bulbous moon
swimming in a cloud-faced
sky. Big smiles and flutters,
living large in a small life;
I float my expansive soul
like a kite in starless skies.
I will find joy and name it
mine.
I do it every day.
Lunchtime, though:
'Everybody you love
will die one day', we concluded
in philosophy class today. Heart
burning with unmentionable fears,
I walked, didn't even pretend like
it doesn't matter. It matters. It matters
that my civilization looks at the world
as sorrow, as damnation, as something
to be cast off. Samsara, the endless
cycles of life and death, of birth,
where life is only
suffering;
what nonsense!
Life is not suffering - life is
pastel shades and warm lighting,
dark forest secrets and midnight kisses,
life is mysterious cloud shapes, lost letters,
new lovers, lilting laughter, thunderous rain.
Life is the happiest thing we know. Of course
everybody I love will die, of course sorrow
is certain and joy is so delicate, fragile;
but that is not all. That is not all.
We grimly declared the
'surety of our sorrows' and
the 'precariousness of our
pleasures' and my heart
swelled in sadness.
You know what,
you're wrong - I have faith
in my life, and it will blossom
and bloom in colours you will
not imagine, it will transform
and tremble in moonlight and
every moment will be precious,
every moment, even the ones
where teardrops lace my face,
I will remember that it is
precious
precious
precious.
Give me a hundred lives.
I have a jarful of light and pocketfuls
of patience; I will survive, and I will
make music. I will write sorrow into beauty;
fragile, yes, but trembling in joy. Trembling.
"In this world, it is very hard to escape happiness. That's how it is."
- Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People
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