How to Survive

How to Survive

by Joseph Fasano

Love the small things of the earth. The dust. The dark rain in the lemon trees. The sound of moonflowers opening at evening. Love them even when the sky is burning, even when a mother crouches with her child in a dark room, wetting his lips with a small glass of water. Love them quietly, quietly but ferociously, their hearts in them like flocks the wind has furled.

And then, in the spring, if the world has survived, walk out with your gift that you have practiced, your fresh gift that has ripened in secret; lie down in the long, soft grass of summer and wait for love, wait for it to find you, and when it lays its hand at last upon your shoulder, open to all that is about to happen; rise up and walk off into the lemon trees

and live awhile, live awhile with someone — their eyes, their scent, their curls — and when love departs, when love is done and fallen, stand there in the coming winds of autumn and turn back to the small things that have been with you — buttons, apples, chapters — and then, because you've practiced this forever, because you are ready now for the hardest task of all of them,

lay your hand on the changed face in the mirror and look at it — its wounds, its crimes, its changes — and tell yourself what you see deserves your mercy — that face, that name, that stranger — and place your palms on that one life in the mirror and open to the whole of it, the whole of it, and love it like the last chance of the world.

Source: spaceonspace.com