Once there was a great bombing, and I had my baby sister with me. I had Maria on my back and I was running back home, but I could not breathe, I could not swallow. I could not say anything. When I came home, mamika embraced me. She said, "Why are you so frightened?" That was such a balm to me. Her words still live inside me. She said, "All of us will meet anyway, even if they kill you. "There was such a strength for me in those moments. Through my mother's calm, unshakeable faith, God came to comfort me.
It finds no companionship anywhere
And no wish to find any.
My sole desire is You,
And You are always absent.
Can one love absence so intensely
That even your presence
Seems like an intrusion?
I move around in aimless circles.
Rituals and sacred symbols,
Once treasured symbols of relating to You
Are meaningless to me now.
They communicate nothing of You,
Who are everything to me
But for whom and from whom I feel no love,
Nor hope of fulfillment.
I am as one turned inside out,
And there is nothing there — not You, not me.
If this is union, there is neither two in One,
Nor One without another.
I long to relate to everyone,
Yet lack the capacity to relate to anyone.
There is only your boundless presence,
That treats me like a thing without a heart,
Except perhaps a broken heart.
For the God I thought I knew
No longer exists