One True Thing

It’s a wordless place that ripples through me like silk, felt as intimately as breath, seen in the precise shade of pink that distinguishes the sparrow’s form as she flies. It’s in my son’s smile, entirely his own and birthed from the geode I have yet to discover. He sings its song. Joy is our natural state, wonder that shape-shifts and we don’t have to teach.

And yet, we try. To control it, to wrestle it into boxes with neat spines that display our titles. Standing straight, full of hard lines and right angles, we lose the ease that nature intended. Scared of the mess of questions or other’s opinions, like shadows in the woods. Fear starches the silk into a husk, a barren shell.

So on hard days I sit in the sun. I dig in the dirt and let the sweat turn to salt on my skin. I feel an ocean drip over my bones, an internal tide that can steady me if I let it. I don’t need to justify this silence with intelligence. It finds me. It is me.

It’s the way I know I was made for the Garden too.