05 Apr 2026: Something Beautiful

“Something beautiful is being born” is the kind of statement dreamed up by people with nothing better to think about. Something found scratched with a gas station pocket knife into the paint of a toilet stall door at a truck stop on the highway out of Boulder, Colorado. It’s something like the hollow sound of radio wafting out of the car next to you at the red light on a hot, ghost-willow day in July. “Something beautiful is being born.” Think about it: The passive voice? Who’s the mother? We couldn’t know. You just won’t tell us. No one ever does. She’s out there somewhere, in the throws of labor. The sweat pools on her face—puddles on the tarmac in a thunderstorm. Her voice rips and cracks through the air—heard to me as only brontide. And, I don’t even know her name. I only know “something beautiful is being born.” But, beautiful things are everywhere, I think. They are little stones in the creek; we pass by them constantly. They sit in their droves; little buddhas doing nothing in particular. The truck stop radio wafts in through the sponge between my ears. I’m not really here, but i’ve heard something beautiful is being born.