by Catherine Gonick
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| Tonglen, or “taking and giving” is a meditation where you imagine taking in others’ suffering as dark smoke and giving all that they need as bright light. —A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment |
Asked to inhale
your pain
and to exhale
my compassion
I instead
inhale your righteous
rage
feel fear
exhale my own
just rage in return
and too fast to notice
a fiery fence
springs up
the burning barricade
of exhaled words
that separates
my dangerous pain
and yours
and makes us equal
in unsafety
Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, Forge, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and in anthologies including Support Ukraine, Grabbed, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She works in a company that slows the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate.
