A Quiet Place with Strangers

It takes a quiet place to unstop the ears of the soul; so much self-protection in the blaring societies we’ve made isn’t easily undone; it sometimes takes the gentle hands of strangers, warm water, a bulb-syringe, to free the plugs. And as things wash down the sides of our heads, past our temples and over our cheeks we begin again to hear the music we’d almost forgotten: lullabies... hummingbird wings... crickets under the porch... After the coma we come back again to life knowing intimately the harmonics of silence in the presence of strangers, their hearts beating wordlessly counter-rhythmic, embellishing, finally reviving our own. There are no strangers.