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This body is not the cloud, but the pillar assumed to manifest his love unto us. I found a notebook of Radhika's early English phrases. In it, I said the word, “Buddha,” pointed out Buddha's head, and she said “mouth!” She pushed a toy car towards me, said “Buddha!” The “e” changes “a” from car to care. Compassion's a machine that sounds our voice, pre-linguistic and post-industrial. To hand out is to act. I took the styrofoam box in my two hands and placed it beside a man sitting on the sidewalk. It felt like ritual, like obeisance, too little too late and yet. If he sits in front of a business, he can be arrested. If he sits across the street from a business, he's subject to a sweep. A subject is agent to an action. In the past tense, it's disabled, swept. Oh grandfather Joseph, was that you on Hotel Street, or do you still somewhere walk the streets of Pittsburgh? Your signed copy of Hamlet sits on my shelves. I knew you only through my mother's words, which were not kind.

--5 June 2015