By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

I wake up to the dawn of calm, before the birds steal the silence, where I can only hear the sound of me. I listen to my breath, telling me, that the moment is precious, and each breath that passes is a moment gone, and the new breath is here, to sustain life, moment by moment. So many breaths that are hardly even noticed as they pass within our bodies, and out of it. This is how the more important things pass, unnoticed.

Each day, we carry on with our lives, doing our own priorities, neglecting the passage of time, allowing the encroachment of things we considered harmless and benign, but has now exponentially bred itself in the fibre of our existence. The benign in the beginning, has become malignant, and it pervades our consciousness, with a threat of extinction. It became, over time, part of our breath. We breathe our own annihilation.

What we do with our remaining breaths is up to us, or more correctly, the remaining breaths that we can still decide to breathe, given all the compromises we have already made that defiled its quality. We breathe with the realities of time, but we must do so with a renewed hope and awareness, no matter how very little remains. We hold  the breath a little longer, like a most beloved “pinabli”, about to depart.

 

Waiting for the flowers

 

so, I make excuses

my body aches,

my tooth, too.

and the sun is hiding

behind dark clouds

threatening to rain, again

 

the birds, with whose songs

I open the curtains to greet the day

begin chanting, the same songs

only sadder, drowning

in the sound of engines speeding

on wet, slippery, treacherous roads

 

I drown, too, in the eddy of uncertainty

lick my pain, invoking spirits

chewing on nature’s gifts

the way dogs and cats forage

and chew on grasses, to heal

their wounds

 

Yes, I am down, today

and maybe even tomorrow

and the next days after

but gaining strength,

like so many others

afflicted with deeper pain

 

like them, I weather the rain

I wait for the sun,

I fondle the breath

I wait for the flowers

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