6/21: (Tuesday) Today marks 6 days along the journey of the three weeks where the crack in everything beckons a polishing the luminal darkness of melancholia of this time. How does a “deeply ecumenical” mysticism relate to all sentient beings?

Here is another example of how Shevili’s poetic language is a mystical texture that is not “magical” but “abstract” landing on the animal presence of a fly. Seeing through the perspective of a fly, how then can those places of vulnerability, uncertainty even doubt point towards the light as it refracts inside with this next poem from Shevili’s recent collection, Poems to Yova (2022):

My fly, my fly
leave me
from morn in my cage
it’s got no father
it’s got no mother
there was never
even once a son
leave & float in a chamber already
& glide content so
so forlorn as to what’s possible
to say to the fly in my room
I still all day long
heart hurting
already came darkness
came what shall i say
to my meager fly
my fly leave me alone
leave me in my cage

Questions for self-reflection:

1. How can a fly in its” meagarness and forlornness” guide to revise my conception of self in relation to the cosmos?
2. How can I rediscover what it means to be free from the place of my imprisoned self through the eyes of the fly in my room?