I have come to a far place. The light is harsh and the ground is hard and dry. I do not know who might help me when I find I can’t go on. I go on.

I hold to those kindnesses that encourage the body as ripplings of mind, the way the leaves talk under the moon, the way the window streaks the light across the floor. Old old pleasures. There is comfort at the very skin-edge of things. I try to remember.

So much goes by so fast.

Even in speed there must be skin. When all the landscape blurs to a wash of darkness and light, still there is some point of intersection, some exposure to this here now. There is this: the River King’s beard, potent as moonlight, the creak of things that bear my weight, the stair, the chair, the bed.

The River King has sustained an injury, fallen into a rising darkness, ravenous and dire. He lists, he stills. All the currents gather in his belly. He refuses comfort. He quits the game. The River King has turned to stone.

All movement, all hope, rests in me. I am taking us where we need to be. Wherever that is. Forward.

They say you cannot assume the suffering of another. I know that. But there is an us-ness to the equation too, a partnership, the work of making things real. When the River King keens, I bleed.

I would like to ask him to make himself easy to carry. But I do not. I do. But he can’t hear me. He hears me. But he can’t answer.

We have come to a far place. Nothing is recognizable. I go on.

OOO