today...

First, you cry.

Let the No sink in, let its truth seep into your soul.

There is no Why yet, only the clear simple answer,  NO.

Then you sit in the grief.

I am there now. I need to do this alone, in quiet,

Without rage, or conversation,  or conjugations of reality.

We got something very, very wrong.

There are not 14 million people who hate.

There are some, but millions more who looked at us and said “No…

I’d rather choose someone vile, and crude, and witless in his self-centered ignorance. 

Because what you are selling is worse.”

We got the diagnosis wrong.

We offered all the treatments we believe in, and the answer was “ No thanks”,

I do not want to go where you are taking me.

 I don’t want to be who you imagine.

 I do not want the live the life you offer.

I am far from answers. I need stillness, and silence, and the intersusseption of ancient wisdom folding in on itself, blocking, intruding, contradicting certainty until it finds a new passage, a new light to shed on truth. I need poetry and music, and the art that speaks without language at its feet.

We got the diagnosis wrong.  And it is too soon for doing. 

Doing more of what we want  to do will only harden their resolve.

And raging against their ignorance will merely reinforce our own.

We offered someone kind, and joyful, wise and strong. And still they said no.

Is it who she was, or what she carried? 

I need to go deep, beyond the simple, the obvious, the evil answers that come so easily to mind. Because if they are true, the world is not worth saving.

 And there is no grief big enough to take me there.