Through the hotel wall a woman cries,
“I can’t do this anymore!” One soft life
in one small box in thirty-story boxes
across the city. She sends her alarm like
a cell letting the body know it can’t hold
up its part anymore. If I were a superhero,
I’d put my hand to the wall between us
and with my X-ray vision, I’d search her
heart like a surgeon of love, pouring light
from my palm through all the walls so they
could disappear for one long moment,
enough for her to heal herself. For I have
slumped against my own walls, unable to
continue. But I am only me. And so I put
my hand to the wall between us and draw
as much of her suffering as I can, the way
a shaman would suck venom from a
snakebite and spit it in the grass.
This excerpt is from my book, The Way Under The Way: The Place of True Meeting (Sounds True, 2016).
*photo credit: Unsplash
Originally published at medium.com