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Card has no cash access and expires in six months. A note that today's episode engages with suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know needs help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available by dialing the number 988-24-hours a day I'm Major Jackson and this is the Slowdown. One of my MFA instructors found life difficult. I spent an evening with her just two weeks prior to the event of her passing. That shifted something in me, a desire to find it all endlessly breathtaking. I have not always, but I remember not wanting to mechanically conduct myself in the hapless fog, instead to see beyond the surface of things. She gave a brilliant reading at Bennington College that last night I saw her. I had recently moved to Vermont, newly married, new job and new child. I drove down at her request. She was unaware of the 2 1/2 hour distance I heard, a new direction in her work. The host of the event noticed as well. He spoke of the courage in her new poems with a mutual friend, the other featured reader. The three of us talked politics over beers. We squeezed into the booth of a makeshift bar on campus. The other reader eventually retired to his room. I was happy to have a chance to catch up one on one. But three glasses in, her mood changed. Meanwhile, Steely Dan blasted loudly from a jukebox. A small knot of people flailed playfully in a circle. The spinning disco lights made the mostly empty dance floor even sadder. She confided in me. She leaned in close, spoke in low tones about her difficult winter. Her eyes were drawn. I felt her hurt. I felt her sadness. Eventually she changed the topic to my good fortune. A coveted job in a beautiful part of the country. She said the summer brought new opportunities for her. She planned to house sit for friends and write, to live frugally with her young son. Sitting there, I wished I could get her to see beyond the sources of her pain. She was a talented poet with a great deal to offer the world. She published two books. One of them received a prestigious prize. But mental illness cannot be wished away. Mental illnesses are diseases that restrict our ability to see fullness and abundance. Shortly after hearing the news of her passing, I mourned, then went into my own silence. I made a conscientious commitment to clarity. Today's poem banishes any doubt that this is all a precious journey. It is a poem that points to a holy rite practiced the world over, whose aim is purification and renewal. Third Week of Ramadan by Seher Romani by then we were used to it. Mornings no longer found us in the kitchen, turning on the kettle. Breakfast was something people did on billboards or tv. We leaned less on promises of after dark samosas, scoops of ice cream. Our hunger turned quiet, orderly, as if we knew what hunger was and what it was never supposed to be. A dull cold squeezed our ankles, burned in our ears. Night stunted, we still sleep on bus seats in front of computer screens, hands moved offbeat. Weekends we lay in bed under cream cotton sheets past edges of noon. But we didn't want days to dissolve. Unconsciously, we wanted to stand in our faint bodies, upright, awake, watch the city hurry past our shoulders. We were too weak to keep up. Sometimes this allowed us to see the Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. This project is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web@arts.gov to get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram slowdownshow.