A break in the shadow,
opening the patterns of bricks older
than the thoughts of any of us, of how we change
with facts, formulas, choreographies, dramas—
what fills us the way light
makes us visible to each other, across the space
of difference to here, where we dream worlds,
even as some were taken from us on a single
night in winter’s early coldness.
We ask, in the hours of our grief,
inevitable questions of this senseless thing,
without a reason, it seems, without a just reason,
a heart turning on itself to choose taking life
as an answer to life.
When it was there, the elm
held itself as it held University Hall, against
endings, so that we can hold loss accountable,
lift it up to the sun, that miracle connecting us
that night a heart eaten by its own ache gave us
an ache we could not imagine.
A break in the shadow…
opening the patterns of bricks older
than the thoughts of any of us…can lead us
to think of what it means to be a collective hope,
an unfailing faith in a world we can become.
—January 25, 2026