A whirling steel fan reminds me of chaos.

She asks me the usual questions;

I give my usual, cordial answers.

Two decades now and what have I done?

Who have I seen?

Who has meddled in my wound to help me?

Everything, everyone, I say.

I withhold my customary joke about white witch doctors—

she’s an MD, but also knocks on Gambian drums

to rally her red-eyed healing spirits.

No need to stop traffic over it. Such are the times.

"What about your own practice," she asks.

"My practice? My practice. Ah yes." I let it drift.

"And your teacher," she says. "Does he still live in Fiji?"

"No, no. He died in November." I look up at Him. "So they say."

"What’s that?" she says.

I said, "He no longer lives in Fiji, no."

"I’m sorry," she says. And we carry on

as a beeswax candle drips down the television

and the drumming ends in a native flourish

on what I’d call a happy social note.

Yet another brave attempt to divine the meaning,

the genesis of my pain.

My coiled bones.

In the mailbox today,

two new pearl-white book covers, one orange.

The first, a conclusive writing about Him.

The second, a photo montage of the final evening:

He sat for us in half-lotus on the veranda of His home.

Third, a personal account, written by his daughter

on His penultimate day. Warring

and emancipating in the art studio,

sealing the last word of His opus.

I flip these books over in my hands like playing cards.

I run my fingerprints along their slick, glossy covers.

What I feel is spite.

For the lie they seek to impose on my morning.

For the death these fool-books are trying to prove.

I stack them in a place of honor anyway, to the right of His feet

below the same photo I knelt before and gazed on

when they said He might be gone.

What do these books mean? I have no idea.

Works of fiction, decoration for my walls.

I see my Master every day.

He speaks in desert tongues

and never grants a sense of rest.

He opens the way; lays it bare.

There hasn’t been the slightest death.

I unclasp a chain at the base of my sweating neck.

In my palm, I spiral the mandala's silver center.

Watch it glint in sunlight.

I never asked for miracles.

For an unreal thing to prove the real.

But here it is.