Karmic Residue

A Manual for Emptying

the thing about unpacking yourself is
you find receipts everywhere—
crumpled in pockets you forgot you had,
stuffed between cushions of a couch
you've been sitting on for lifetimes

each one itemized:
that sharp word in '98
the door you didn't hold
your mother's sigh, replaying
someone else's hunger, you walked past
pretending to check your phone

and here's what nobody tells you
about the accounting:
the numbers start dissolving
the moment you actually look at them,
ink running like mascara in rain,
decimals floating off the page
like dandelion seeds

what did I know, what did I know of love's quiet and lonely offices?

you think you're adding it all up
but the sum keeps changing—
getting lighter
even as you count

watch: I'm holding this old anger
(you know the one)
and already it's less angry,
more just... tired
like a fist that's been clenched so long
it forgot what it was protecting

the receipts multiply as you read them, then divide themselves by zero, mathematics breaking down into what it always was: an attempt to hold water or stop time with both hands

here's the secret: karma isn't a debt, it's a story you keep telling with your body—I and the village are sinking, I and the centuries are sinking

but the story wants to end

so you read each receipt aloud: yes, this happened, yes, I carried it, yes, I'm done

and the paper turns to ash so fine it's indistinguishable from air, a door into the dark

some people call this forgiveness
but it's simpler than that—
it's just physics:
what you stop holding
stops existing

between going and staying the day wavers

by the time you reach
the bottom of the pile
you realize
there never was a pile

just you, sitting in an empty room, lighter than you've ever been, after great pain, a formal feeling comes, wondering why your pockets felt so heavy

the last receipt
is blank

tell me, what else should I have done?

you sign it anyway
with invisible ink
and let it go

into the tracelessness
that was always
underneath

and you, O my soul, where you stand surrounded, intimate, in an unbounded ocean of love