The fact that you were aware of your mental wanderings or of your inner turmoil or of you inability to be still shows that you have some small degree of silence within you, at least a sufficient amount of silence to be aware of all of this.

~Anthony de Mello

when I forget about you, how will you make it about you and remember all of those lives you left behind?

inquiry for today~   there is only one edge of shame, and yet there a million ways to sift through it tenderly…..

the sweet dangers of not knowing

Sour tobacco, tofu bowl, bright.

Planks of hollyhock in Anhui,

the way ‘I don’t know’ could open

months later like a hive.

Hard tide of shame that I thought

had dried out years ago.

Love’s barks grow watery, faint.

‘I walk the edge of an honest life.’

The lash of carnal thoughts, followed

by the thin whip of banal guilt.

Seed of an inch on the left foot sole.

Hot yellow lights of cities

where I once pressed, over and over,

up against alternate lives.

Now, I sit. Above a deep ground.

The mind fetches the chatter.

And so on, and so forth.

~Jenny Xie