Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing like the ones
in the old stories...
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests...
...Requests to stop what
you are doing right now
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life....
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and
laughter at once,
so I see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.