Saturday, March 30, 2024

Last Midnight By May Lishen

The Rising Phoenix Review

March 30

We walked around Lake of the Isles last midnight. I
asked her when she felt most alive, and she said in
the silence, so I said, we can just be silent for a
moment then, and we were, and we looked out at the
nearly-frozen lake, sky bright and white behind
frosted branches. I joked that NASA must have
cloned the sun and hid it behind those clouds,
because that's how bright it was. She paused,
looked up, smiled, and said, no, it's a white curtain,
and behind it God's up late working. I'm not telling
this story chronologically, this was an earlier moment, before
the shared silence, still a holy moment, but a
different kind of holy, a lighter kind of holy –
anyways, what I meant to get to was this – so we
stood there, and my breath slowed, and I wasn't
looking at her, and I couldn't hear her inhales and
exhales, but I knew, without looking, that her breath
had slowed, too. And I think that's the simplest
definition of spirituality, knowing something
without any measurable proof. Somehow, in the
middle of the city, it was perfectly quiet, and
perfectly still. I turned to her and whispered
(because it would have been a violation to speak too
loudly, like we were at church, and the lake was a
priest I didn't want to speak over) sometimes, lately,
I've been getting this feeling – that this life, as
terrible and boring as it can be, is something that I
am glad to have. She said, me too.

By May Lishen

Biography:

May Lishen is a twenty-nine year old woman residing in Minneapolis, but she may have another age and another town by the time you read this. She does not know what else to write about herself as it is all subject to change. She is sending you light, and wishing you peace.