Deep prayer

"..la oración profunda no es aquella que pide, la oración profunda es la que ya no pide..." (Clarice Lispector, Revelación de un mundo, pág. 210)

Silence came and took up residence. It made a home for itself. My longings had grown to the size of dreams. Dreams, now adults, gave way to prayer. Prayer to hopelessness. Now I understand. It's rather silence. I'm not asking for anything at all any more.

Anything at all? There's a remaining request. The survivor of the "year of living dangerously" clinging to faith and hope as if from the edge of a cliff. The remnant of those years in which I misread a silver lining across the dark night thinking it was the dawn of a new day. The hard-to-kill request is: let that silence be taken as a serenade of love.