Beloved

The beloved is a white bell whose sound is linked to the trees bending gently over rivers that begin where the great oceans end; no sound escaped the harsh land and climate where prayers come and go with such astonishing swiftness the eye begins to tire of the mountains hiding their ill-preparedness with song. How far away, then, the bit of beauty that I run towards, more than halfway entangled with the cry of a woman barely sleeping: see how her breath rises and falls in imitation of the skies; she stand alone, at the end of a map she herself has devised, in the hope that someone else might refuse to grieve.  The river shouts out, “No truth anywhere,” but somewhere else, in a place unmarked, lacking boundaries or words, pale birds echo her unassailable worth, their speechless twittering the pure commentary of a heart no longer in conflict with itself.