Here’s a lesson: If you leave a hole in the forest,leave a mouth open in pain, astonishment or grief,something will come to fill it, blood or baby teethor tiny snakes, the cries of lost children, sunlightlooking to bury itself when it’s seen too much.We say we have seen too much, felt too much.We say our hands have severed and regrownso many times over we can’t recognize them.Those who come here want us to love themas their mothers did not, but our hands shakelike roots in an earthquake whenever we tryto hold someone, even ourselves. We say our handsare the crooked mushrooms in radioactive water,or snake heads with their mouths sewn shut.We say our hands have no duty to beauty, that landwhere the wild go to die, where they’ve slaughteredall the wolves and wear their skins as coats.They’ve slaughtered all the wolves and sowe can no longer be gentle. If you come, our answerwill be a fist of wind that blooms behind your eyeand opens the darkness there from which youwere born, darkness you hoped had forgotten you,and you will feel its touch as the forest floorfeels all the shadows of the leaves at oncebefore, unable to bear the weight any longer,it caves into a sinkhole, the way your mouth openedto breathe when you first entered the world,or the way your mouth will open in your coffinfor the insects to nest inside it. The lesson iswe’re never empty for long, though onemoment can destroy you, so best keep yourtongue between your teeth if you’re going to golooking for something else to be.