How to Keep It

Don't ask the question.

Not because you're afraid

of the answer. Because the question

is the answer. The moment

you ask, you've already

left the room it lives in

and rooms like this

don't unlock twice.

Don't write it down.

What's written holds still

and what holds still

can be measured. You don't want

to know its size. Size

is a kind of limit

and right now it has none.

Don't set a date. Dates are doors

and doors go only one direction

once you're through them.

If someone asks you when,

say soon. Soon is the only word

that means nothing

and keeps meaning it.

Don't compare it

to what's in front of you.

What's in front of you

has already happened.

It sits in the wrong chair.

It mispronounces something small.

It has a body, and bodies

do what bodies do,

which is arrive

and then be ordinary.

Don't test it. Testing

is a kind of asking.

You've been through this.

You know what asking does.

If it starts to fade,

hold still. It comes back

when you stop looking —

in the gap between

one thought and the next,

in the breath before

you remember where you are.

And if someone tells you

this is not a life,

let them. They live

in a place where things

have answers. You live

in the place just before —

where everything

is still possible

because nothing

has been tried.

It asks nothing.

It answers everything.

It will live exactly as long

as you let it,

which is to say

as long as you don't.