i realize i try to be happy for others.

it's really hard to settle with yourself.  i know this.  i remember the monastery, and having no distractions from yourself and your mind and you.   you, amid a sprawling field of gleaned yellow grass, heat-baked gravel and dust and the masses of white, sun-bleached, twisted hunks of wood that are all that remain of past hurricane's wakes.  and you, cowering there amidst the the thousands and millions of bowed heads of oaten grass rustling under the shallow wind whose fingers entangle the lowland sedge like a ravaging man's through a girl's hair as he takes her, and she is dwarfed, she is made miniscule, she is dehumanized, she is a gagged witness that cannot confess.

there is a merciless world for miles around.  the rocks have no voices. the river waters beyond the reeds have no eyes, only the dancing light-illusions, the broken glass. and the trees, their long, moss hair is the silken and grey of the dead. they, too, are silent, and very old.

it is hard to realize you are alone, and that it is utterly necessary in order to see your singular reflection in the black water.  to feel your size among the giant live oaks. that you are one in very, very many leaves, or sticks, or stones.  to have your voice, like theirs, quieted.  to be nothing but you, elemental.

i can not do this for anyone but myself.  to love yourself when you can see the deep flaws.  it is easier to love another's flaws, but not your own, which you know all too intricately and sharply.

there is power in the wide water.
there is power in sadness.
there is power in the water-swept rocks.
there is power in erasure.
there is power in the white heron.
there is power in solitude.

she puts this power toward moving her steps and taking her out of this place.