I shift in my seat. Some kind of order decays before me. Squinting playfully – add a hint of fatigue – I cheerfully mistake the lights for stars. But they concern me not, not today. If I were to give rise to meaning, I would stick with the stars, yet am intrigued by more earthly matters (in terms of how we perceive them). For one, I am tempted to write about a rock. I would dip my innermost into the depths of such an ordinary word as “beauty”, to circle the feeling besieging me as I slip the rock into my hand. Then I close my eyes. I rub the vision away, and my gaze rests on my palm anew, now met with the display of a little egg. The shade of turquoise on its exterior has me wondering about the life hidden within. A felt heaviness I meet with an involuntary tremble. I know the egg as a pod for life will not be able to carry this one forth , too far from nest and mother, just a passing visitor in my open palm. Though I receive it with outright reverence, there is nothing I can do. Our impermanence unites us – an unblemished egg, what may have been bird, arrested in meeting life outside its shell, and a sole human specimen looking on.

We walked a few paces in abstract love, neither speaking beneath the lustrous sky. The stars never faded. In my innocent stretch of understanding I took the soft soil, right where tree and forest floor converged as a resting place for my tiny mate. I may have been mistaken but carry no guilt. I covered you with brown leaves , unspoken words – who would have understood? – the ground shaking – or was it me? – just a drizzle touching my brow, a flicker in the heavens, there, then gone. Beauty, was it? What a dull word in the light of such an honest and brief encounter.