she sat at the table next to the window, watchign her lemon-soda-with-sugar having a panic attack. she could relate completely with the great agitation, the undigested, insoluble sugar and the soda that bubbled over the brim onto the surface of the table, a large, fizzy, unbounded mess. in an almost sadistic sort of way, she was coompelled to keep adding more soda to the glass every time the panic was over, and watch it overflow again.

she sat at this table listening to the babble of tourist voices and the shriefs of the children next door, making this free-flowing mess and thinking about unwritten poetry about a thousand buddhist prayer flags, crossroads and indecision, the unbearable thrill of a first touch and the incomparable pain of a last kiss.

a thousand buddhist prayer flags could be hope abandoned at the side of a hill, surrender, a prayer too precious to name, wishes to secret to whisper to anyone but the hillside, which never falters, never forgets. a thousand buddhist prayer flags speak of pebbles inside shoes, digging into exhausted soles, and of groves where trees whisper and offer reprieve. a thousand buddhist prayer flags are beautiful, and reminders of beauty in extreme pain and great failure and complete brokenness. a thousand buddhist prayer flags are an offering to the fundamental insanity of being human.

and so there may be messes with no boundaries, lands carved into countries and cities and nightmares. there may be love that is simple not enough and many months and years lost to an impossible wish. and loss that breaks through fragile layers and fortresses on the side of the hill that remain mulishly intact through the flood and rooms affected by thunderstorms and people who only wander along the hillside alone, under the thousand buddhist prayer flags, whispering incomprehensibly of abstract notions like possibility, healing, love, recovery, hope.

10/06/2013