I rarely let the word "No" escape
From my mouth
Because it is so plain to my soul
That God has shouted, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
To every luminous movement in Existence.
- Hafiz
She was young and fearful. A shy girl
who was afraid of dogs and snowmen,
people and lightning. When she was
thirty-one, her husband moved out. She
was jobless, timid, with two young children
to raise
- a boy and a girl. Sleeping on the couch so that
WHEN a big, hairy figure in a black
trenchcoat would happen to break in,
she would be the first victim - and hopefully
the last - that he would meet,
sparing the children. After the big, hairy figure
in the black trenchcoat never came;
when, somehow, she stopped hiding from
uncovered windows - portals for the
ugly faces of menacing men -
that is when the word Yes first formed
at the back of her tongue. A whisper
at first, foolishly done at times such as
when the wrong man wanted to be with
her, but the word grew into her and
now there are days when it swells in her heart
and out through her pores. Yes! Yes!
Yes! to life, to love, to what comes next.
