Donna Henderson

SHENPA

He hadn’t done it. But in the seconds she’d thought he had, she
recalled all the times he’d done it, or something like it, and this
refreshed her resentment as blooms in a vase are refreshed by
recutting the stems and replacing the water. And the resentment
thought faster than the realization she’d done it herself
this time, and so had the effect of him having just done it,
again. Inadvertent she said to herself of her own mistake; careless
she thought, of him.

Note:

Shenpa is a Tibetan Buddhist term meaning (approximately)
“the ego’s habits of reaction to familiar events and words.”

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
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