Futile.

You get Sufjan, and he's a treat, so listen.

We have stories that are secrets in their own regards--silence in their tellings.

There are words we never want to say or hear or feel.

And these are such: Cancer. Love. Death. Distance. Time.

They are harmful and breaking and painful and I fear them. I do not feel safe or happy or comforted. Right now, not even by love. But that's for another day.

I'm surrounded by cancer, in the women we've lost, the men we're losing, the places we're going.

And I feel useless. I can do nothing. I can pray. I can cry.

I've done those things, and I retire in curious March sunsets with nothing, feeling nothing, feeling scared.

I do-love you-I do.

I can change the way I feel, and the way I experience what happens around me, but I cannot prevent the spinning of the earth, or dark empty breath and its stopping, or the growing of tumors.

I cannot force life to function under the realm of my whims.

To try is futile.

So I do nothing and cry and pray.

I see the astounding simplicity of who people are---

In strings and salads, running shoes, tobacco pipes, haircuts, hubcabs, VHS tapes, nail polish, name tags and needles--for creating and destroying-- and in crossword puzzles, veils, backpacks, sandwich bags, and text books.

I see truth in picnic tables and Midwestern Oaks and the conversations we've never had with the people who have always needed them most.

We see truth and we keep quiet.

And I would say I love you, but saying it out loud is hard.

So I won't say it at all and I won't stay very long.

There are things we ought to say, and love we ought to give.

But we are frightened and foolish.

And words are futile devices.

More from Sufjan. Listen. We can do much more together.