Heart Talk: Starlight

Reflecting on some medicines

I’ve put a vibrant detail of mosaic tile from Calle Ocho in Miami. There are three flowers, two yellow ones and a red one in the middle. The flowers on the left and right are cut off by the picture’s edge. The background color is green. The strokes remind me of coloring with felt tip markers. The flowers have six petals. The center of each flower contains the colors of the others. For example the red flower has a smaller yellow circle within a larger orange circle. The yellow cirle has three smaller orange circles with black dots. The yellow flowers have a larger red circle in the middle with a smaller golden circle in the middle with three red dots. The top and bottom edges of the picture have dark blue and lighter blue waves. The images are criss crossed with a gried of white squares. This picture is vibrant and joyful and all the dots and circles and patterning help me practice noticing the smaller details in a bigger moment.

The lights are off. It’s one of those rare nights that sleep hasn’t easily come to visit with me. At first, especially without my glasses I cannot see anything. But my eyes start letting in more of the starlight. I can see the shape of things in the room. The piles of books and papers on the desk, the water in the glasses for the spirits. I’ve been anxious lately. Although anxious is not the word. I’ve been looping a track of fear in my mind’s background. Even while I smile, get up, brew my tea and robot through the day. I wish all our days were easy and free of worry.

I know I’m putting pressure on my heart. So many of my gone now relatives left the world when this muscle gave out. 

In order to make something beautiful from this day, I feel my way to my table to sit and chew on some medicine.

Right now all roads seem closed, but there’s a rough footpath, almost grown over, that will lead me to a waterfall. 

Right now, surrounded by churning waters on all sides, I can feel a dime sized spit of firm land that I can use to spread a way.

This is old medicine. We have to begin somewhere. One of us has to see the life in what is around us. Taste the leaf and recognize it as a cousin to the one our aunt calmed our fever with when we were little. It’s not quite the same so we will have to test its power. 

One of us has to try to make word sounds out of the rocks in our mouths. We have to start talking past our differences.

I’m sitting still but my mind is moving.