There is a hollow place in the back of my throat, like a closet stripped of garments, where I usually store those quiet, grieving things the world is not fit to see. But every now and then I have one of these days where the world takes a good look at me and sighs and says, “hey, kid, you’re alright,” and I just stand there and smile and it smiles back and together we help to empty the closet.

It’s not always hard.

Sometimes, it is as easy as breathing—sometimes it is breathing—to throw out the old jeans and too-small dresses with their faded calico that I told myself I would one day wear again. We all lie sometimes, you know.

And when it is over, we stand together, the universe and me hand in hand with acceptance and we look around at all of the space we have made. And I take a good look at our earth, and I laugh and grin and shake my head and I say, “You know, you’re not as bad as we make you out to be.” And together we share tea and biscuits in our tea party above the world where

beauty holds us tight and

never lets go.

It doesn’t last forever. Just as the sparrow must one day find a perch to rest and sleep, our party comes to (always comes to) a close. And our beautifulgorgeouswonderful bodies fade and decay into the earth, where they seep into the water sources and trickle slowly together, blending and mixing and becoming one and separating again down the little tributaries that make up life and so we vow to do it again soon, real soon, and then we are gone just

mist in the desert.

Waiting.

Until someone has the thought to come along and build a well, and then slowly, slowly, the bricks are laid. It is not always easy to become real again.

But it happens. And as it does, does the world grow large and menacing once more, and with each time the bucket lowers, something in me starts for fear of greeting it. And I turn my eyes to the bottom of the well deep below where the sand of the desert is still dry and unused and I wish to be it that I might find myself away from here.

Then I am home and familiar, and I settle back into the ruts of my life and I weep for the sameness of it all, and the quiet place in the back of my throat grows swollen and full. And I buy clothes that I will never ever fit, no matter how long I run or heave or press or how much I starve and scorn those who eat. Because no matter how many pounds I shed, my livid beaten face will never change.

My closet grows full and angry and it is no longer a gentle wonderful world of tea and biscuits but a vortex of spite and pain and it grabs me round the middle and shakes me and throws my face into the mud of the forest and shouts and raves and I am once again a child, hiding beneath the shimmer of the grand piano for fear of the falling rain and cracking skies.

Thunder, thunder, lightning lightning.

Then one day my voice gets too thick to speak and I cry out for the pain of it all but no one can hear me because there is no longer a world in my closet, and there is no longer me or us or death or pain or love or passion or music but only clothesonclothesonclothesonclothes of clothes that I will never understand. (Skinny mirrors, skinny mirrors.)

Until the moment comes where the universe empties its own closet and turns to me and looks not at itself but all around it then reaches in beyond the eternal folds and hems to hoist me gently from my pity and softly says, “hey, kid.”

And so we do it all over again.