Infinities

"Insofar as the world is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self:

Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty."

- Buddha, the Suñña Sutta

Infinities

Forever is a big word, but the Australian beach spreads forever;

The Pacific responds to the infinitude with its own, which holds center against a different axis.

We were coming out of the sea and it began raining thin and powerful bolts of freshwater,

And the way that the sand received all that rain cooed an omen of how tomorrow morning’s beach would crumble under bare feet.

After infinity, the coast will probably end in an unceremonious taper, then rock face, then dirt, then more coast.

Forever is a flimsy word, and a mistake.

Laying flat against a vastness of sand reminds me that Buddha tells us the world is empty. Emptiness lies, of course, outside of voidness, but not far enough to bypass intersection.

The word for it is “sunyata,” which means hollowness; I don’t feel anything hollow beneath my palms…

I feel infinities. I touch them with the infinite skin on my infinite body.

I feel the bloat of everlasting emptiness expand within me.

I embrace it – though there is nothing to be embraced.