The things that slow us down can't be manufactured.
They have to come— arrive— without warning and before or after we're ready.
Today maybe it's a train rattling through your car and the wind it leaves behind picking up the ends of your hair and pulling you back into something some time when a train was in the distance— was it home, or something like it? When the whistle of the train—
Or a phone call where the C-word is uttered and everyone in the room collapses, but underneath. On the inside. The push and the pull of, "But wait. Just one second ago life was about this or that and now this." Or
a man catches your eye down the hall, a woman laughs with a crinkle in her nose— had it been there before? Maybe only today and then a series of wonderings when wandering is no place to stay, or
sitting on a rock in the desert not asking questions and questions begin to ask themselves in the form of prayers you couldn't hear during this morning's coffee.
When does a prayer begin and when does it end?
Where was I when I was the one who took the breath inward to address God on an exhale and why am I still breathing in one elongated breath since— when?— Was I seven? Or forty-three?
And who was I when I thought or felt or began "Dear Lord . . ."?
What is movement but our footsteps being heavier than air but lighter than we expected because the weight of now never lands until we look back.
Today I looked up into the trees in a place I know well and I saw the sunlight weave itself through every leaf and all the way down, just as it has before and there was a moment when all I could do was forget where I was forget what I was thinking and maybe I breathed but who is to say
Iris Lennox 