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I am soft today. Soft as shortbread dough fresh off the mixer, liquored by an extract of vanilla and spun with siftfuls of powdered sugar. And salt. Because when I say soft, I don’t really mean sweet. I mean the feeling around a streetlight on a quiet road, that miasmic halo that reveals the season’s lingering winged things aiming for the bulb’s muted warmth. Or when the market vendor, handing me a sheaf of kale, said it was so much better because of the frost. I’m not saying I am the frost, or the leaves, purple-green and pliant, spread across the palms of our half-gloved hands, but whatever middle it was that we met. Palm-soft. Air-soft. Truth-soft. Soft as whatever the sky is doing right this minute, shedding the day behind it. And in-betweenness where what’s next isn’t here yet. Or it is, and if I keep my breath soft enough, I’ll see it. - Maya Stein
Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand. In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as you list. Bind me close to you with nothing. I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the night clasping the earth in my breast. Make my life glad with nothing. The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in secret. Let me fill to the full my heart with nothing but my own depth of joy. - Rabindranath Tagore
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