Pick an hour of the day, either at the beginning or end, and write down that hour on a sheet of paper. This paper should be folded and put into your pocket. Before you do that recall a place on your body where you had a bruise. The kind that changed colors. Write the place on the body on this sheet of paper. Think about a rainbow for at least sixty seconds. Next remember a time that your heart felt blue. Write on the same sheet of paper what or who made you feel this pain. Sit down Indian style on the floor of where you find yourself and count to five. When you breathe in, think about Rothko and his Blue on Blue. Understand, you too are creating art. Intently focus on the word and color blue. This will help you find the language for the words you will write next. Walk to a river or lake or pool. Kneel down and place both palms face down on top of the water. Keep them there until they become cold. When the ache from the cold moves through your hands. Take the paper out of your back pocket and read the words you wrote and place both hands back into the body of water, palms up, letting those places release into the air and into the sky. Take both hands out of the water and place one atop the other and hold them over your heart. What is the thing you want most in the world? Think about that and hold your hands firmly above your heart. After you’ve thought quietly about this, think about the cold you felt in your hands and let that turn to warmth that you feel in your same hands. You are now using energy to replace pain, warmth to replace emptiness. Write the word SKIN and begin a poem about things that live underneath our exterior from the perspective of healed heart, where you sit in the face of silence, where you know what it means to sweat.
