"hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face"

on boundless capacity

Fellah woman, Franz Xaver Kosler (1864-1905)

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The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you,
I will love you, again.

Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love. BOA Editions, 2002

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Creative Invitation

Today, your creative invitation is to be on the lookout for an assignment, an opportunity from the universe to express love to someone who needs it. Outside our doors are people for whom “everything they held dear crumbled like burnt paper in their hands.” What can you share with someone you don’t know, from the treasure of your existence?