Please don’t study for 21 hours and sleep only for 3,
Please don’t worry yourself into a panic about deadlines,
Please don’t lose yourself while worrying about the whole **** world,
Please don’t.

Pamper yourself, get that bubble bath,
Go buy a pint of ice-cream and watch that thing you like,
Block people who are negative, put photos up of your friends,
Self-care is important.
- Me, learning after a semester of breakdowns and lost hope.

As Thomas Wolfe said to Walt Whitman,
Crossing Brooklyn Bridge one early autumn
Sunday afternoon: "I greet thee on the
Brink of a brilliant literary career."
But I may have mixed up my facts.

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I been scarred and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
   Snow has friz me,
   Sun has baked me,

Looks like between 'em they done
   Tried to make me

Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--
   But I don't care!
   I'm still here!