a window in time

sits between night and day
with twin cats curled in rest on either side
purring bodies of past and future press wet noses into glass
reaching for, without ever quite touching, their own reflection 
the window is round like a tunnel
and we must throw our arms wide and gather our knees to our chest
to notice ourselves crawling through each fading present into what is beginning

there are mountaintops marking the place between inhale and exhale
mossy peaks beckoning our bodies to spread out like stars 
and sink in pillowy stillness

there are puddles of salt water scooped in bowls of hot sand
the first to gulp morning sun in their bellies
each love child of crashing waves and shifting dunes 
is no longer land but yet to become the sea

there is a moment on the doorstep
we can no longer call ourselves traveler
but before we’ve arrived
all forward momentum
dissolved in anticipation
of what awaits on the other side of the threshold

there is a moment after the grief has welled up
before the tears fall
after a knife has grazed skin
before blood slips through the opening
before pain stumbles from bed to her watchtower

and sometimes there is a storm before the calm 

in the last weeks of winter
with sun already opening her palms
to tree buds and green shoots
we are the closest we’ve been to starving 
right before the fruits return 

sometimes the moment before the pain lets go 
is the first time she rakes us through with full knowing
of just how badly it hurt

and sometimes we are on hands and knees 
combing with feather and candle
while also throwing all we can in a bag
walking away without waiting for bread to rise

sometimes our lenses are perched
on each tiny grain of olam haba 
already cracking open, right when we take in
just changed we need to be

sometimes we are sipping ancient remedies
of rest, dissolving our efforting, right when we
realize all we’ve done to endanger our home

to be in a birth canal is not only to not know if we will make it to the other side, it is to not know there is another side until it’s oxygen is tickling our wet skin and to still surrender our newly formed bones to an enveloping squeeze that seems so likely to crush them

to be in the middle of a wild sea that has transformed its molecular reality to offer safe passage, to know there’s no going back before glimpsing a new shore is to not know if the miracle will hold just long enough for us to make it across