Devotion

by Patti Smith

I climb the side of a volcano carved from ice, heat drawn from the well of devotion that is the female heart.

It occurs to me that the young look beautiful as they sleep and the old, such as myself, look dead.

It comforted me to imagine being covered with my mother’s tears.

There are no signs that tell us who we are. Not a star, not a cross, not a number on the wrist. We are ourselves. Your gift comes only from you.

She told of washing his blood from her ankles, burying him without a single tear. As she relived that moment she wept at last, not for the loss of him but of innocence.