This is the silent time in a woman’s life, the one that no one has said the meaning of. The messy birth into the need to be her own justification. This is the time to explore the dark caves of our life. To spend the day listening to the damp drip of the earth’s heat, the quiet of mother fire. To contemplate condensation.

This is the time of distillation. Our lives move on to a denser form, the change takes heat, takes fire, takes sweat and tears. We are in the caves of our lives, in the moist and salty confines where we feel the earth’s sorrow, the sorrow of all living things, the sorrow that gives birth to light.