“
You are stronger than you realise.
You are crueller than you realise.
The smallest words will break your heart.
You will change. You’re not the same person you were three years ago. You’re not even the same person you were three minutes ago and that’s okay. Especially if you don’t like the person you were three minutes ago.
People come and go. Some are cigarette breaks, others are forest fires.
You won’t like your name until you hear someone say it in their sleep.
You’ll forget your email password but ten years from now you’ll still remember the number of steps up to his flat.
You don’t have to open the curtains if you don’t want to.
Never stop yourself texting someone. If you love them at 4 a.m., tell them. If you still love them at 9.30 a.m., tell them again.
Make sure you have a safe place. Whether it’s the kitchen floor or the Travel section of a bookshop, just make sure you have a safe place.
You will be scared of all kinds of things, of spiders and clowns and eating alone, but your biggest fear will be that people will see you the way you see yourself.
Sometimes, looking at someone will be like looking into the sun. Sometimes someone will look at you like you are the sun. Wait for it.
You will learn how to sleep alone, how to avoid the cold corners but still fill a bed.
Always be friends with the broken people. They know how to survive.
You can love someone and hate them, all at once. You can miss them so much you ache but still ignore your phone when they call.
You are good at something, whether it’s making someone laugh or remembering their birthday. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that these things don’t matter.
You will always be hungry for love. Always. Even when someone is asleep next to you you’ll envy the pillow touching their cheek and the sheet hiding their skin.
Loneliness is nothing to do with how many people are around you but how many of them understand you.
People say I love you all the time. Even when they say, ‘Why didn’t you call me back?’ or ‘He’s an *******.’ Make sure you’re listening.
You will be okay.
You will be okay."

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

He sniffed the wolves
~found them wanting
Wolves sniffed of him
~found him daunting

The shepherd fears
not beast of prey
With shiverin' lambs
he greets each day

Upon the hills
and braky glen~
shepherd watches
o'er his friends

And when the night
calls lambs to sleep
the shepherd sings
while grey wolves weep.

r ~ 25Mar14

"As a core, idealistic truth, love is all that matters. In practice, especially between fundamentally flawed and unfinished beings, it’s not. Sometimes our love isn’t greater than whatever is doled out beside it. It doesn’t always win out. Sometimes it shouldn’t.

When you first realize someone could be something to you, the days become hazy and fluid and the last thing on your mind is logistics. It seems cold to be calculating at the beginning, to compartmentalize a person and see if those parts match up to the whole you envisioned.

We’re so quick to glide over whatever instinctive inkling resonates every time we realize there’s a void greater than our love for someone can fill. We press on, seldom realizing that every relationship culminates in deciding whether or not those instincts are the ones to follow.

Love exists in multitudes. In shades and elements and dynamics. In pieces and in learning, in growth and in change. In strangers and in soul mates. It does not exist as a single, expendable truth or experience. We’re so quick to attach that idea to one person or one relationship. We don’t want to go through the motions of experiencing those levels of commitment, attraction, interrelation with anybody else. The risk of losing is too great, but withholding waives the possibility of ever finding it in the first place.

Some relationships are long, steady, and easy; some are quick and enlightening and challenging. Some brush along our surface and others dive beneath and uproot us. Some might be temporary, one might last “forever.” That doesn’t mean it has to be the only one there is. That doesn’t mean there’s not something to be experienced, to be taken, to be learned, from whatever came before.

You can’t make a relationship something more than what it inherently is. You can’t make yourself fit into something you inherently won’t.

The whole of human love is what’s enough, the parts are just precursors.

We are unfinished, every last one of us. We have to let go of wishing each chapter was the last one because we’re afraid of how it could end otherwise. We have to stop forcing people into being the end-all-be-all for the same reason. We have to paint in contrasts, in love and from loss, and we have to find eventually that the whole picture is filled, and we are filled, from what we take, find, lose, gain, learn, give and create with the multitudes of people who loved us, in the multitude of ways that happens.

You’ll realize you knew the answers to your questions all along, it was only a matter of having the courage to act on them. You’ll let go when you don’t realize you’re doing it. You will have to learn that loving someone doesn’t always mean that being with them is the answer. You’ll realize that love is enough, but the kind of love that makes you stay only partly comes from the person you stay with. The other part comes from you.

You’ll realize you don’t have to be out of love to say goodbye. You’ll learn to separate the two: the loving part of you and the logical part of you. You’ll learn to use them in tandem. You’ll learn that two such things can be used in tandem, though you were taught otherwise and it seems impossible. What you’ll find eventually is the only love worth having is the kind that’s there even when the rest is gone."
-Brianna Wiest

Now through night's caressing grip
Earth and all her oceans slip,
Capes of China slide away
From her fingers into day
And th'Americas incline
Coasts towards her shadow line.

Now the ragged vagrants creep
Into crooked holes to sleep:
Just and unjust, worst and best,
Change their places as they rest:
Awkward lovers like in fields
Where disdainful beauty yields:

While the splendid and the proud
Naked stand before the crowd
And the losing gambler gains
And the beggar entertains:
May sleep's healing power extend
Through these hours to our friend.
Unpursued by hostile force,
Traction engine, bull or horse
Or revolting succubus;
Calmly till the morning break
Let him lie, then gently wake.

I
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

II
O the valley in the summer where I and my John
Beside the deep river would walk on and on
While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above
Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,
And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall
When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,
The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud
And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;
'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera
When music poured out of each wonderful star?
Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down
Over each silver and golden silk gown;
'O John I'm in heaven,' I whispered to say:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O but he was fair as a garden in flower,
As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,
When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade
O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;
'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,
You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,
The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,
Every star rattled a round tambourine;
Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:
But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

Dear, though the night is gone,
Its dream still haunts today,
That brought us to a room
Cavernous, lofty as
A railway terminus,
And crowded in that gloom
Were beds, and we in one
In a far corner lay.

Our whisper woke no clocks,
We kissed and I was glad
At everything you did,
Indifferent to those
Who sat with hostile eyes
In pairs on every bed,
Arms round each other's neck,
Inert and vaguely sad.

O but what worm of guilt
Or what malignant doubt
Am I the victim of,
That you then, unabashed,
Did what I never wished,
Confessed another love;
And I, submissive, felt
Unwanted and went out?