i used to get visits from the dead
after self-awareness this was
terrifying and unwelcome
later became a curiosity and profundity
but still not something i was sure i welcomed

when you were born
the midwife said,
watch her all night, make sure she's still breathing
countless hours your tiny body laid in the my forearm and palm
i put my forehead to yours
and you said, you don't have to worry about that anymore
i knew you'd just come from a place, i had long forgotten
you'd lifted some burden

three chapters of seven, later

all my favorite writers have hope
i only have a tiny bit left
if the world must end tomorrow,
i'll still try to lay a brick today
because of you.

"IN THE BEGINNING there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins.

There was not one amongst us who looked forward to being born. We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see." 

-Ben Okri, "The Famished Road" Chapter 1

Penblwydd Hapus, Medwen