Compassion for the Minotaur | Terry Blackhawk
We need it for the same reason we say we grieve—for ourselves, not for those who’ve gone. For nights when touch isn’t enough and a partner’s peaceful breath will not lure us into sleep but we must stare out at the room unable to name the dark while all we’ve tried to hide roars up from the basement and follows us when we step outside ourselves, so that we hear in the traffic’s whine or the homeless man’s rage that echoes through the tunnels of the MTA the same despairing bleat that must have burst from the snout of the helpless baby when he saw his mother’s horrified gaze and understood that it fell on no gleaming hide or ears sweet to scratch but a creature angular and strange whom she could not possibly cradle, or croon to, or take as her own.