My brother died on his thirty-second birthday. Overdosed. I wished he had chosen his thirty-third. Then his death might have made more sense. Not that I’m religious. Our family never was. I suppose, like he, we sought our own gods. I chose love. Still, the religious say I’m a skeptic. But I have faith and show my children that god is love, the universe’s pulse, connecting us to each other and every living thing, making us important to the world solely because we exist. During the Pandemic, isolated and scared, my girls forget. Indifference replaces love. Their new god disappears their bodies and souls. I turn to science to exorcize their god. Sometimes love is not enough.
budding forest
sow and cubs emerge
from darkness
Read Drifting Sands here: https://drifting-sands-haibun.org/
