Grasping Air

How do I express what cannot be grasped?

What appears before my eyes, but I cannot grasp,

I do not want to, if I could grasp it, completely,

I would be a wet spot of sorrow.

So I crouch in everyday life.

I pull up the blind, I set the table, I unset the table, everyday chores in everyday life: shoes in the hall, put magazine to the recycling. I fold my son’s clothes and put them on his cupboard. I straighten his sheets, which are soft from many washes. The toys in drawers, the pens on shelf, the dinosaur in place.

How do I deal with knowing, that life has changed in its core, for so many, and it has always been so, and it will always be so, and it is always so, and man has not learned. Will man learn?

My son’s thick hair fall into his eyes as he plays with a phone. It’s evening and the sun is still high. Smoke from frying have gathered inside the fan and kitchen smells of butter and hamburger dressing and cucumber.

He needs to start helping out. But he is not hungry, he is safe, he has a bed to sleep in, he has a home. He has us. He has what he needs.

He doesn’t need his name written on his hand, in case we got separate during a missile attack. He doesn’t need to spare water, in case there is none in the next town. He doesn’t need to leave our home and walk and walk and walk until his feet ache, but he must continue anyway, he must continue, there is nothing but to continue. He doesn’t need to wake up at night by flight alarms, or learn where the bomb shelters are, or sleep under a tree on fresh snow, or have a future that is disappearing as easily as smoke.

How do I talk about the grinding of the stomach, the anger that ferments beneath the surface but has no outlet or beginning or end? How do I put into words what cannot be grasped?

So I pull down the blinds for the spring sun dazzles and the flowers get too dry, and I water and I dust and I add another newspaper to the recycling and I continue grasping air.