My Circle

The world is shrinking. We are all so close, so tightly bound. It seems we could feel the breeze across the world, if we tried hard enough.

Yet for me, the world seems larger than ever before. Every day, new phenomena are born for me. Seeing an arrest; fielding questions on topics I did not know existed. I smell a waking city; my pulse beats with one that will not sleep.

And every night, I sleep a little smaller. Not less- I am the same, but my setting has swollen.

Often, my surroundings take in things I do not like. Hatreds and love irrational; logic and feeling unsound. They crowd me, peck at my moral and intellectual structure, or else they coo and whisper their shadowed allure. It is a dangerous business, growing this world of mine. And defense is often hard to come by.

But every night, before sleep (that wonderful symphony of deepest truth and lies) I fold my arms beneath my pillow. The circle that forms begins at my heart, and stretches, warm and deep, to my head. In my circle, I think of all that I know, all that I believe, and I savor the musky tang of reality. This is real, I think, slipping safe and solid into my circle. This is true.

And even the bright light of day could never outshine my clarity.