Day 25: To be the better thing

This is what it means to be the better thing.

To keep visiting her to hold her gnarled hand, though her dim eyes pierce you with the flaccid spite of forgetfulness.

To wring from your bone-dry chest a few more puny drops of strength, because you know that however little you have left, he has less.

To turn the car around and make it right.

To love her hopelessly, faithfully, without condition, even as she walks away from you.

To ask the cashier you’ve never seen before why she looks so sad.

To be faced with two evils, and to refuse to be crushed between them, but to choose—remarkable, indomitable thing—the one that will cause the least suffering.

To live foolishly, pursuing paradise against all logic and reason.

To tell your stories with courage, but to hold your peace when they aren’t yours to tell.

To lay your self on a universal altar, your self in whatever shape you find it –

you raw and wriggling worm,

you brick with crumbling edges,

you brittle leaf, frail enough to crumble at a touch,

you toothless, grizzled lion—

and when it’s bruised, or crushed, or beaten,

to nurse it back to life, and offer it up again,

without power, without armor, without reproach;

until it is lifted up by another spirit,

awed by its nakedness,

that sings back to it a song it’s always known.

This is what it means to be the better thing.