Drinker of Ink

by Shannon Castleton

to dwell on the origin of pain is to become trapped in a loop—to circle the trauma as if in a semi-truck, until the tire grooves grow so deep, you can’t turn out to drive forward.

And it is a fact, though I cannot cite statistics, that most people who die did not actually plan on it.

I am filled with love as a great tree with the wind, as a sponge with the ocean, as a great life with suffering, as time with death.

One should proceed slowly, and when two people make contact, they should walk a long way together.

A body wants another person’s arms to hold it. It does not long to hold as badly as it longs to be held. Here, it wants another body to say, rest here a while.

So much happens to and inside every human being on this planet—it’s as if we are all small infinite worlds. And how do we connect? How do we come to see each other’s constellations?

I think every baked good and poem is a world. When you create one, you hand a person a view of the stars within you. When you eat someone’s bread or read someone’s poem, you walk the roads inside them—their memories, their joys, their sadnesses.

This is such a small moment, housed in such a small space, but it will spin like a planet in my memory.

“It is terrifying to be a parent. To choose to behave one way with your child, and then watch what comes of it. It is like planting a garden with aster and dynamite, but you never know which, and either sprouts up at the oddest times to remind you of what you did well or poorly.”

No time is long enough.

The present we live in vanishes before we blink, let alone write it down in ink.

I believe too wholeheartedly in loving things.

She taught her that life is short and love is strong and no amount of time is long enough.