My metaphorical heart - and, I believe, every human heart - is filled with layer upon layer of grief and love and loss and joy. I'm not always able to access complexity in the moment when yet another tragedy strikes; the good is obscured, invisible, absent from my perception, while the world both inside and out seems full of nearly unbearable emotions and experiences. In those times - in these times, in this harrowing start to 2026 - it feels like my heart has lost every language but that of the blood, and it spills, it pours without end, without mercy.

(Title - prefaced by text in painting - from Psalm 94.)