Sounds in the night

You must have heard them, haven’t you?
The almost, indescribable sounds of night.
Not the ones that keep you waiting on your next breath,
the ones removed,
silent,
peacefully exhaling.
You wonder sometimes,
how it can be,
that the same darkness
can breed such separate sets of emotion,
but it happens,
doesn’t it?
Just like in the day.
I was touched this evening,
very touched,
by words in a book,
I found,
in a dollar store today.
I mean no disrespect to the author,
paying such a slight amount.
Is it an excuse that it is all the vendor asked
and I did not bargain down further?
Without further ado, I share:
“Don’t you know she is the one who came out of her mother’s womb, leaving her mother dead?

Do you know who brought her from the hospital? Her mother’s brother, who didn’t even cry that night. Not one teardrop? No.
Unknown to them, you see what they say.
Will you keep your back turned, angry and hurt? Or will you put on a smile, walk straight into their waiting arms, into their trap of pity? I don’t know.

All I know is that in this city of twelve million, if six or seven, even ten people, say words that hurt, they are a speck in the ocean. Wait for a while, the moon will slide into the right place, the clouds will gather, there will come a tide and with it a wave that will wash this speck away.”
–The Blue Bedspread, by Raj Kamal Jha
I say to you then, namaste, in your deepest moments of the night, “the moon will slide into the right place.”