I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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Tonight, as you undress, I watch your wondrous flesh that’s swelled again, the way a river swells when the ice relents. Sweet relief just to regard the sheaves of your hips, your boundless breasts and marshy belly. I adore the acreage of your thighs and praise the promising planets of your ass. O, you were lean that terrifying year you were unraveling, as though you were returning to the slender scrap of a girl I fell in love with. But your skin was vacant, a ripped sack, sugar spilling out and your bones insistent. O, praise the loyalty of the body that labors to rebuild its palatial realm. Bless butter. Bless brie. Sanctify schmaltz. And cream and cashews. Stoke the furnace of the stomach and load the vessels. Darling, drench yourself in opulent oil, the lamp of your body glowing. May you always flourish enormous and sumptuous, be marbled with fat, a great vault that I can enter, the cathedral where I pray.
Ellen Bass