My father was about packaging possibilities and having them shipped to our doorstep, so that when I came home, at the dawn of the age of the internet, there were often three or four or more boxes waiting to be broken open, so that what was inside could fill the holes inside us

They came in their own packages—the items inside—and were often left there, in a sort of consumer’s purgatory: CDs unopened on a shelf, still in their shrink wrap, novels yet to be cracked, boardgames and books destined to sit sadly, never to be read or played

It taught me, by resonance with my own hollows, that souls really want only emptiness                         
And that to be deceived by what only seems is a clinging grease not so easily removed

The lessons piled up, literally:

It is not what you have but what you use, and wants are never-ending

It’s what you’re present for that you can enjoy,
That brings you home

It's space that creates the widest lane for a soul to walk on unencumbered, seeing the lilies and the birds and the grass which labors not at all but is always crowned, always bowing down in its own green reverence, and never packaged—
Grass which meets its yellow death only to prove there is comfort, even in the grave, resurrected as it is by endless birdsong, to begin again

And you must find the part of you that revolts against fantasy and gags on any glut and finds itself free in the kind constraints of reality, which once seems so cowardly and cruel

All love, it seems, is constrained,
Just as we want, for all our wandering, a home with just one other soul, to look death in the eyes and smile, with hands spread wide, empty
Ready for the emptying of the sky

As we open like balcony doors to the fresh morning

As the wind drops at sunrise, to stir an empty room

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