On Deafness

Today, our son left home.

What can I tell you, 
apart from this impossible emptiness
welling up in my chest?

In Taosim, they call it Wu
Emptiness––
The ultimate reality. 
But I’m having trouble to find the words. 
I didn’t expect this sudden ache. 
I didn’t expect this rush of grief. 
I feel caught off guard by his absence. 

All the while, the morning is full of the buzz of cicadas,
the hum of distant traffic,
and the sting of lost time.

Words swarm––
The tears are still streaming down my face,
and I try to catch them, 
the words, I mean,
scouting, frenzied bees.

Emily Dickinson wrote, to make a prairie
it takes a clover and one bee.
But what do I do, Emily, if bees are few 
and my heart is breaking?

Dead, disoriented bees are dropping right from the sky.
Vanishing before our eyes.
Did you know, there’s a black market in bees?
Poachers are stealing hives right from their orchards.
I find it hard to write, these days, while thieves traffic our tomorrows.
How much harder, to hold a child with open hands?

I scroll the morning news,
where protesters howl and throw stones
only to find the rubbled building already in ruins,
and the glass windows already shattered
from last season’s uprising.
Re-run revolutions, 
infestations of chaos.

My fingers swipe at the headlines faster than a seething rage.
If the world were a more peaceful place, would this be easier, somehow?
Letting him go?

I’m not ready.
He packs the car 
and drives away, 
out of reach
And I’m not ready. 

Maybe it’s the pain of being left behind. 
Maybe I haven’t the heart to tell him, 
there may not be a single bee left.

Pitiful convulsing bees
writhing on the ground.
Even now, as I write,
there is a malady sweeping through the apiaries.

They say, the bees are dwindling.
They say, the bees are abandoning their hives
Raptured Honey bees, Carpenters, and Bumbles 

There is no normal
The colonies are crashing
And my son, he too,
is leaving.

It won’t ever be the same. 
Whatever comes… 
It won’t be the same. 

Before he goes,
we pick out a chef’s coat for culinary school 
and a set of professional knives.

Not too sharp, I say to my husband. 
I can’t stand the thought of him bleeding.

Then, I’m reminded of Rumi who said,
The wound is the place where the Light enters.

-by Elizabeth Engelman