Circle of the Daisies by Seeley Mangelsen

–After “An American Sunrise”

A body is made of the dirt and dew that it will join again. Eventually we become the daisies we pick, held up to the sunlight and woven into us. A body is not right nor wrong, just a revving heart or cake for birds. There is no inherent sin in a child who did not choose to be born. There is no Lake of Fire waiting for the dying woman whose arthritic hands are entwined with those of the wife she gave her heart to decades before it could be written on paper. So many lies they number the stars, dancing and tantalizing to follow, guiding us for centuries to shipwrecks on shores that could’ve been avoided. Don’t blame it on Eve, it was never her fault. It was no Body’s fault. Dust to dust has already been said. Eternal Life is in the daisies and the dirt, and we all find it eventually, neither right nor wrong.