3. Your Softness Saved You

I come directly from that summer.
That summer I wasn’t there
you threw yourself onto the road
crawling on sharp gravel.
Asphalt and blood
at once became slippery-soft and warm.
With everything so adapted to the hands
what did you take as the door to your home?

Had you been a jade pendant
you would have smashed to pieces.

In a ward where the wind knows no tact
your eyesight
came close to absence
thanks to a momentary darkness.
You want nothing more than deep sleep.
God
protects you with illness.
A permanent sleeping
covers the summer’s sacred, pure white tender-leaves.

From a summer 20 degrees below zero
I step inside.
My hands clutch
the sweat of many long years.
In the back of my mind I know
that it is more difficult
to snuff out a woman
than it is to destroy the barnyard grass.

YOUR SOFTNESS SAVED YOU