The Infirmament

An end is always punishment for a beginning. If you’re Catholic, sadness is punishment for happiness, you become the bug you squash if you’re Hindu, a flinty space opens in your head after a long night of laughter and wine. For waking there are dreams, from French poetry, English poetry, for light fire although sometimes fire must be punished by light which is why psychotherapy had to be invented. A father may say nothing to a son for years. A wife may keep something small folded deep in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in resembling the terrible things we believe about ourselves, a rock comes loose from a ledge, the baby just cries and cries. Doll in a chair, windshield wipers, staring off into the city lights. For years you may be unable to hear the word monkey without a stab in the heart because she called you that the summer she thought she loved you and you thought you loved someone else and everyone loved your salad dressing. And the daffodils come up in the spring and the snow covers the road in winter and the water covers the deep trenches in the sea where all the time the inner stuff of this earth surges up which is how the continents are made and broken.