Stillness sounds like birds chirping.
Stillness feels like easy breathing,
And warm feet covered in soft blankets.
Stillness looks like a blank page that asks nothing,
Except for me to be to me.
In the stillness, have I drifted in and out of sleep? In this stillness, I’ve allowed my mind to wander as thoughts come up. I remember seeing small children dancing with dust on their bare feet while the church band played. My feet feel clammy and cold, but they are covered in warm, soft blankets. The birds are chirping, but the small child next door is crying. I can hear her through my open windows.
When my mind wanders like this, my breathing is easy until I think of the children separated from their parents. I’ve heard those babies crying, too. I made sense of those separations and abandonments within a system called, Child Welfare. But, there are also abandonments that I can’t make sense of, thinking of the pre-teen wearing hijab, speaking to the world from a dark room with no windows, saying, “Only God alone has not abandoned us!” Her cries ring in my ears: “Where are you, world?” My breathing becomes difficult. My stomach, lungs and chest feel as if they are all in my throat at once.
Let me drift away from these troubling thoughts; the sky is fading from blue to grey to black. The night divides the day: the separation of the rich & the poor, the mother & the child, and the body & the soul...
Stillness sounds like deaf ears
Stillness feels like no breath in the lungs,
And warm earth tossed over cold feet.
Stillness looks like a blank life that asks nothing
Except for you to be...no more.
From this stillness, may We rise with breath deep in our lungs and blood pounding in our chests. Come! Rise up with open eyes, with open hands, and with open hearts. In the stillness, may we listen with ears to hear both the chirping of the birds and the cries coming from our neighbor’s open windows. May we feel the rhythm of human breath in our lungs--which, from dust to dust, is never ever still.
