He has planted me in a just-right-sized pot and placed me in a spot half shade half sunlight.  He sings “mon’enfant”  while persuading my leaves to the side, revealing withered vines which He quietly clears.  I have to look away when He does this.  I know they’re dead, they don’t need to stay, but they still hurt, and I feel skeletal without them, a movie star without makeup.  He throws them away.  And so it continues, with occasional breaks for water.

This is our relationship.  I don’t know how it could be any other way.  Even in this disassembling there can be such stillness – when I’m driving north on I-43 listening to My Bloody Valentine and the world becomes a hummingbird to be watched and appreciated.  Or watching “Murder She Wrote”, my grandparents in their leather loveseat, I on the floor, occasionally lapsing into a nap, understanding for once that my very presence is their pleasure.  It is not euphoria or apathy or even exhaustion, it is perspective.  He was, is and will be.  The only thought worth thinking.