PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

They sat on a park bench facing the bay. She sipped her chai and listened to her friend detail her most recent encounter with a male suitor. She envied her friends ability to fall in love a million times when she herself couldn't fall in love even once. Leastways not with someone who loved her in return. Indeed the times she had felt most intensely in love were for men who did not warrant her existence. But wasn't that the definition of unconditional love, to love all equally, expecting nothing in return. Isn't that the training she had committed to, taking the vows, dwelling in equanimity, non-attachment, holding none close nor others distant. She realized as she stared at the sunlight sparkling on the water, hearing the sound it made lapping against the seawall, her friend's voice a distant echo, that the practices she had adopted in a state of desperation, as refuge, were working. The mantras had capsuled a protective membrane around her, sheltering her from that which would cause harm as well as what may be her deepest desires. Those often held the most vitriolic seeds of suffering.