Refractions

For no reason that bears scrutiny I have, on my side of the window, food –  food you seek with “Please”,  food I pass to you, and you say “Thank you”  (then our smiles), and then I say, “You’re welcome.”  The script of charity assigns your lines:  "Please." “If it pleases you."  “You can give or withhold.  I hope to please you with my ‘Please’.”  (Of course there’s no withholding – I’m here to give.  But I can have attitude, be impatient, grouchy, rough –  and still give lunch, feel “helping”  and get thanked.)  You say, “Thank you.” “I hope my gratitude means  I can ask again tomorrow, ‘If you please.’”  And my line, also assigned:  “You’re welcome” says, “Yes. You can.”  It’s the script of charity – the default of good people,  but not innocent.    Even less innocent, someone says,  “Beggars can’t be choosers.”  But isn’t it our choosing makes us human,  isn’t agency our human coin?  What? “Beggars can’t be humans”?  One day a rabbi fed a crowd   with food they al

You don’t have to carve the wreckage out to make yourself someone that someone can love. You include the wreckage; it is part of all of you – and loving less than all of you's  not loving you, it's shopping Some of the wreckage is the cold remains of something warm –  like hope, like promise, even love. Sometimes you wrecked it, sometimes someone else, and sometimes it just happened; you were there and...               W hump! It happened. You were there for all of it; it is yours now; bear it: All the deep good stories bear wreckage without shame. People might tell you  that carving out the wreckage makes you better. (It doesn’t.) It makes you someone smaller, someone else, and hides you from your lovers, (all but One). April 26, 2023