I sit in my third-floor room, maybe more to be consoled by her presence than for any thing she could say to help me understand what is happening. I had sensed something was out of harmony, the body was registering something the mind could not put a word to. I could not find an answer, "Is this about my own pain arising from the past into now?" Then, the mental question arises within, not heartful as the previous, "Did I do something wrong?" No answer. There was nothing to hold to, no explanation, only to embrace wholly this sense-feeling. This arising within bodily had not been felt in a long time, not to this degree. Tears lingered just below the surface, felt but not seen. The word arose~tenderness. A quiet tenderness, a way Silence holds another or self or both, not with arms but heart-with-heart, with or without the other knowing and may never know. In itself, it has no need to be spoken, is and is timeless, eternally alive and fresh. Indeed, to think upon, rather than only feel intimately, can separate me from the tenderness in its first, pristine arising.