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Love smiled at you first.

all It ever wants you to do

is smile back.

:::

i feel as though my ignorance

has just been cracked by a whip!

tears are not a manifestation of sadness,

nor fear, nor joy;

they are an effect of acceptance!

a result of unadulterated awareness!

a natural byproduct of presence!

an incomparably crude outcome

of disarmament to the moment.

:::

allow yourself to succumb to the stillness

like an African lioness.

allow for the thoughts

to carry themselves away in the dry, hot air.

allow your surrounding environment

to become a place of insignificance.

allow for the all encompassing absence

to be the single phenomenon

that comes between you

and the antelope of being.

allow the stillness to settle

into your fur and the bones of your teeth.

hunting is not necessary

if you simply allow the antelope

to come to you.

:::

love as a word

is short, impotent, and excusable.

love as an action

is outside of language itself.

:::

an Irish farmer had three sons.

the farmer and his sons,

along with so many other families,

found themselves destitute during the Plague.

the farmer knew his sons would not survive

if they were to stay home, so he told them

they must go and find their own way.

the farmer said each son is to take one thing

with him to help him survive.

the first son said,

i will take potato seeds, so when i find healthy, fertile soil,

i will build a farm.

the second son said,

i will take money, so that i may purchase

what it is i will need.

the third son said,

i will take hope. when my brother's potatoes fall ill

to the Plague, and my second brother's money runs dry,

it will be my hopefulness that keeps us all alive.

what this Plague does not know,

is that hope is far more contagious, far more valuable,

and far more fertile than what this famine claims to be.

hope is the one thing that is stronger than death.

so that it what i will take...

i will take hope.

:::

hope resides in an all powerful chalice

from which we sip.

it is the primordial elixir

that remedies our mortal slumber

and gives rise to the belief

there is something

more holy, more existential,

more honorable, and more unencumbered

than the totality of death.