SIM/DIA/BOLOS

The thing is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your
hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical
heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own
flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand
this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

- Ellen Bass

painting:
Yayoi Kusama
WORLD OF LOVE, TWO PEOPLE WHO BOUNDLESSLY LOVED EACH OTHER, 2017

Idem velle ac idem nolle.