I'm lying on a couch by the open window, listening to a
warm breeze fluttering the leaves of the sycamore, cars
sighing and grumbling down Broadway with some destination
in mind. A crow drops elegantly toward the pavement,
the noon light splintering silver across the tops of his flattened
wings. The air stills. An unseen jet rakes the sky with
thunder. Small tufts of tree-cotton drift by, their progress
hesitant but always angled upward. In less than a month
I will have been ill for exactly half my life, a milestone I
could never have imagined reaching with my sanity intact.
I seldom know what I need to be doing, or if I really need to
be here at all. And yet I am here, and my life is connected
to other lives in ways I cannot fully comprehend. A ripple
of breeze presses one leaf against another and another, and
the sound empties and fills my heart with a sensation that
is indistinguishable from love. I think of Meister Eckhart:
If the only prayer you say in your entire life is thank you, it
will be enough.
Elizabeth Nordeen