12. A clean conscience is a good pillow

Walking this morning, I saw a worried man's eyes. Alone in there, like me in the white room with that bland, recently painted smell. Pale people strolled in the sun wearing all manner of sun-protective headgear. I was just as pale, hatless, maybe closer to cancer and a necessary changing of the watch.

In the bookstore, cool, church-like peace, found lines of a short poem spoken in a young girl's secret Pashtun.

You're eyes aren't eyes. They're bees. 
I can find no cure for their sting. 

So I remembered your eyes and their particular warmth, and how inside me things change when I look into them. I thought of the sleep of children. I bowed to the power of this.