On a mountain path, a painter meets a novice buddhist nun

In the many nights
I spent with sacred texts
I never could forget
the charming taste of darkness

After years of training
To undock my future past
Echoes, lying, my breath
A special kind of sadness

You painter from afar
who seeks what I once saw
don’t turn your soul to stone
but live, and love, and mourn

It’s not this hairless head
Or my unsullied eyes
The truth is unforgiven
It’s pain, and fire, and lies.