Serenity

I asked a question in earnest, hoping to be given a pot of honesty. If I see a Hercules in you, why become a supernova the next minute? Neither answer could stop the bleed from my heart. I don’t want to hold on to emptiness any more than I want to cling to false hope. I don’t want a Mona Lisa of my sullen features— a veer from reality, no more than I want a Picasso distortion of ambiguities. I don’t want the family’s skeleton from five decades past tapping at my door, no more than I want it running flocculent and unruly before bystanders. I just want rest— not a restless sleep waxed with terror, nor a sleepless dream that never lets me land. I want the scintillating magnet of people to be true, not the shallow porcelain bought by vanity. I removed myself from the magnet. I want the world to be still, like a sacramental river, undisturbed by humanity’s profane thirst for gold. I want one moment beneath a mangrove tree, listening to nature speak its language of serenity. Hopefully, I will learn to speak it too.