Three Things, Today

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

This is not poetry about acceptance. It is anatomy. To hold something against your bones means to know its weight, its temperature, its particular realness. Not as idea but as body. We practice this holding when we notice what we actually need: the person across the table, the light at this hour, the breath that came and will come again. Then we practice the harder thing: knowing that needing something and keeping it are not the same.