These road signs point to where you’d be
if you weren’t kneeled over in constant apology
you tell me sometimes you can hear
Aidan’s laughter at night,
as if someone’s strung them around
street lamps like fairy lights
your lungs collapse at the mention of his name
and your chest heaves with trembling shame
but you never told anyone else about the way
guilt straddles your shoulders every morning
as it leans towards his mother’s ears screaming
ears now turned deaf with grief

You tell me about the nights so dark
you can’t tell it apart from the hollow in your chest
most days you find it too hard to breathe
because the guilt hugs you so tight
it forces itself in your lungs
where these organs can’t contain
your feeling of sin
so you keel over and ***** by the road
where you last held Aidan

There are footprints in the mud
where he was last standing
but the imprints have hardened and Aidan has grown since
there was a much colder instance
when his sister flung a picture frame at you
so it shattered and you picked up a shard
to scratch out unforgivings in the mud by the road
where you watched your best friend die

Walkin' talking gawking
the goats, giraffes, red panda
no **** tiger
exhibit like they promised
Alyssa in the OV
for a few days with her
Mom and Dad
My oldest Chris
and Sarah.
My grandaughter at our
first meeting
of course
adorable
even if a little frightened
of burly bear Grandpa

Cant say we bonded
but we blew kisses
and met
Aidan, Journey
and Cameryn
by strange coincidence
all my children
present at once
in our undersized home
lions, yes elephants yes
no tigers like they promised
for opening day

But bubbles
lifted by the wind to
great height
above the entrance
to pop
unceremoniously
to be noticed by only me
and Alyssa
at the zoo

Aidan,

There are a few things I wish you had known
And in lesson from which you'd have grown
A lot sooner -
The twist of time left your path entwined
In more vice than virtue,
I really need you to see that.

Altruistic aims, aren't always mutual gains
Only act on impulse if your intentions are true -
And only for those who'd do the same for you.

Unbridled fury does not buy you respect,
Or victory - things can always be approached better.
Remain yourself, but keep logic intact.

You needn't be afraid of vulnerable thoughts.
Collect yourself outwardly. The battle you have fought
Is not one that others can see.
Caution -  it may feel like
You're battling me.

As you traverse the plane of your mind,
You may find that what you once basked in
Is now a question of
What could have been

Choose your memories carefully in which
Your creativity is hugely dependent on
Don't create what you can't feel -
Delve,
But don't drown in the ethereal.
Try not to lose yourself to
What others think of you
Or your writing, your music, your views

I know this stuff's hard, but I hope that you try.
Anyways. Take care of  yourself. Tell mom I said hi.

- Aidan

How to have a real **** day -
By Aidan A.

Lets start with face palming your phone onto the floor
Its like what little social life I have
Has just shown me the door.

Lets amplify that
With the fact
That my internet
Is in a state of disconnect,
So the mobile hotspot
Keeps me from internalised rot.

Fast forward to the next morning
When you wake
At half past eight
Assuming that the girl youve been seeing
Will arrive soon instead of being
A few hours late.

You head the **** out because the lack
Of wifi
Slowly stupefies
And then you are told that the LCD is ******* up,
It needs replacing
At a price too high
To justify

So you proceed to purchase
A secondhand mobile,
Unknown to you
That will be the best it gets for awhile.

You contact your sweetheart
But now shes got other things to do
Instead of tentatively spending the day with you
And in your understanding
You can't help but feel a bit ****
So you grab some BK -

This is where it gets metaphorically gay.
(Dont get offended I used it that way.)

Jump into the driver's seat
Realising the ticket hasn't been paid for
And the useless paper bag
That encapsules the takeaway
Is now leaking Coca Cola
All over your car.

Yeehaw. What a ******* great day.
I don't know what else to say.
Don't pity me though
Thats not Aidan A.
I'm on edge cause I've been sober too long
But its better this way.

Besides
I've run out of ***** to give for today.

I got on the bus alone today
and almost no one else was on it.

As it neared our campus the setting sun
hit the window so right, sending a golden corona
across the dusty seats,
bathing us all in this brilliant golden light.
Brown eyes turned to honey, blue ones to oceans—
a handful of minor gods and goddesses
on their way to class,
in sweatpants and backpacks.
It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

None of us wanted to pull the cord to stop,
but finally, someone did,
and I had to get off.
I feel alive on the bus, I feel alone at midnight.
I am the princess of the bus.

I make my boyfriend Aiden worse without intending to.
I make a lot of things worse without intending to.
I think that if I just spent a lifetime on the bus,
circling round and round at around 6:30 p.m.
I would cause a lot less harm on this planet.
But someone always pulls the cord, even if I don’t.

Aidan won’t pull the cord and neither will I.
We might be riding this bus for a long time yet.

Love.


I grew up in what I later had labelled for me as “une famille anglaise typique” which consisted of me, my brother and my parents. It was as typically happy as those typical families that can be found in typical children’s books and children’s imaginations. We were that ‘close-knit family unit’ type family and we fitted perfectly into that ‘ideal family home’ of our typical red-brick English terraced house. It was one hundred years old but felt older and we went to church on Sundays. We were boring, safe, long-skirted.


We loved each other with the sort of love attributed to our type of nuclear state and I’ve always found it both funny and convenient that nuclear is a word for both bombs and families. Like the people who thought things up had wanted to draw our attention to how we were a touch away from detonation and a mere countdown from demolition.


Mummy blew me full of buck-shots; her Love was fired in rounds. Each cartridge of anger settled deep but left only pleasant traces behind. They lodged beneath my skin, etched with Protection and Compassion and Parenting, and those words bled internally into my immune system so that I knew how to identify hatred and remove the threat of it from my body.


Love.


If you’d asked me of Love I would have said that Daddy rubbed it through my hair when he said “Goodnight” so that it crept through my dreams when I slept. I would have told you how I’d clung to the fence of the infants’ playground until my brother had come to tell me that it was OK to let go. I suppose I might have said that it was an underrated ingredient in Mummy’s baking that she kept in a cupboard all by itself.


I would have passed you as many clichés as you could bear to take and I would have delivered them all in the half-smiling manner of a typical intelligent six-year-old girl.


Love.


We don’t sell clichés anymore. The business of Happy Family Stereotypes fell flat and we bailed out of the sinking ship in divers’ gear that only made us sink faster. Mum forgot to restock her shelf of ingredients and the time for Typical skidded through our fingers like shopping lists and childhood.


It’s not that we no longer lace our shoes with the same strings; only that the strings have been forced to fray and have shortened themselves with knots. It’s not that we don’t continue to Love each other but that we ceased to remember to love ourselves and, when we did that, there was somehow less Love to go round. What should have been an excess curdled and I watched it rise like water vapour from hedges after a frost.


On all of our To Do lists we manage to exclude the most important detail: Love Yourself. If we were to remember the task’s existence then we’d procrastinate a bit until something easier came around. We overlook ourselves and yet people still say that we humans are selfish creatures.



Too selfish to Love ourselves?


It’s not simply that self-deprecation is in fashion (although it is) or merely because we want to draw pity from those who spectate our lives (although we do) because it is with utmost sincerity that my friend and I agree that “if I was my friend, I’d loath me.”


We sit in town on benches by the fountain that sometimes forgets to spout water and rinse out the colours of our lives in the summer rain.


She says;


“Sometimes I’m scared that my friends don’t like me, because I can only ever see myself as annoying.”


I say;


“That isn’t a 'Sometimes' thing, Evelyn.”


Love.


It’s such a difficult thing to hold onto; like an idea or an aftertaste.


She laughs like I was cracking jokes on the paving slabs and says;


“Do you think we’ll ever grow up?”


And I ponder it because I know we’ll grow old but that’s not really the same thing at all. I wonder if I’ll ever grow out of my petulance and fantasies and idiocies and excuses.


“Not really. I don’t want to, to be honest.” To be honest; I say it like I'm the sort of person who wears truths around their neck and invites others to borrow them.


“Me neither. Everyone wants to fast-forward to Prom and then hold time there like, like, I dunno - like they would hold someone’s hand.”


“I don’t.” How relieving it is to confess that I have no interest in the event that 'you just have' to Love.


“Me neither.”


“It’s just an awkward excuse for dressing up and then standing around, pretending to look pretty.”


“You going with anyone?”


“Of course I’m not,” I laugh and hope that she isn’t either so that we can carry on being two lonely, ignorant, inexperienced best friends who’ve never tasted kisses and who have no concept of the term voluptuous. Boys don't fancy girls with flat-chests and freckles.


“You should go with Aidan.”


“Why, because we’re both as short as each other?”


Love.


I laugh at her suggestion even though I know how stepped-on I’ll feel when he arrives at Prom with a tie in a shade that fits my dress and an arm around another girl.


When I was nine, I followed an instruction manual for making a Secrets Box and the first secret I squirreled away was his name. I wrote it on a piece of paper and punched love hearts into it with red pen.


Love.


These days we’ve taken to exchanging banter in Tutor or Maths and I always make sure that I never make anything that’s too much like eye contact in case of humiliation. I busy myself with the fear that, if he looked at me too closely, he’d realise that I was staring back at him with my nine-year-old self. He’d recognise in my face that I still have the secrets box, empty of all but his name, and although I don’t quite believe that I’m in love with him I know that I smile inside when we have good conversations. I know that if he asks me to Prom, I’ll say yes and not just because he is the only boy with whom I am on eye-level.


Love.


“It’d be cute,” she says and I lean away, holding up my hands as a protest and a shield.


“God no.”


And here I go, hating myself again because I have absolutely no intention of ever telling her that I keep my heart like a secrets box. I confide enough in her to say that I don’t care for myself but starve myself of honesty when it comes to caring for someone else. For which, in turn, I procrastinate on the task of self-centeredness a little longer.


Love.


I don’t know much about Love. I know that there are four types – Philia, Storge, Eros, Agape – but who could say where exactly they filter into my life? I know that I ‘love’ beaches, I ‘love’ Rolos, I ‘love’ pencil sharpenings and the smell of good books but the truth is that, when it comes to Love, I'm a sherbet love heart that's been left to dissolve in a glass-jar ocean. I'm a Cadbury's Dream that chose to melt itself out. I’m a strawberry lace that someone likes to chew the end of.

though younger
than a father’s
nostalgia
you are
my boy
of 10 years
this day
which has
always been
a reflection
of how I miss you
on the others

it's been 4 weeks
one month
30 days
since the sky decided it needed
a new artist.

You have a spark that blazes past my ice cold eyes,
you're the six on a weathered pair of bad decision dice.
You're the smoke in my lungs; my hip's friction's delight,
and you're where I want to be at the end of the night.

So pull me by my the clasps of my black leather coat,
past the bar, to the back, to the room that Aidan keeps aside.
Whisper in my ears, past the roar of alcohol and smoke,
these words that I've longed to hear for some time.

Say:
"You are the cherry on a cigarette; the blade of a knife.
You burn me and turn me to melting when you enter my sight";
I'll say:
"Your lips are my addiction, your *** is my television,
and your eyes are where I want to be at the end of the night."

Then we'll explore love and bad decisions on the table and the floor.
You'll pull me closer, bite my ear, and whisper. "Shut the door."

"I want to be a poet. That's the only thing I really want.
I want to find my own way of writing, my own style.
I know I haven't yet, but I am striving to do so.
How should I put it? It's very hard to explain.

I want to write in a way that they writing is me- is myself.  I want to write so that what I write and the way I write is me, because of the choice of words and the arrangement of the words, the way I combine them, group them together, orchestrate them. For me words are music as well as- as much as- they are meanings.
Writing is different from talk."

-Cordelia
This is All
Aidan Chambers

Brumbies night live





Johnny'.   Hi dudes and welcome to Brumbies night live right here at Canberra stadium
And this is a great night for this wonderful match, and Sue Longways is in the Brumbies
Tent with a few supporters with their Brumbies speeches and here's Sue
Sue'.     Hi and I had a great day at the Canberra show it was ever so greet and now here is Jacob who is 11 and he has supported the Brumbies all his life, Jacob here is his speech
Jacob'.  Ladies and gentlemen of the Canberra stadium
We are gathered here tonight to see the Brumbies ****** the Reds
I don't care what the score is
I don't care if I sit right next to this freaky old fogie
Who never washes, I just know at full time
As long as the Brumbies win, it will be alright, hey dude
Sue'.  Thank you Jacob and now here is the next speech by Bob O'reilly
Bob'.   Ladies and gentlemen
We are here in Canberra stadium the stadium
That is in the coldest winter in the entire Australa
And tonight if the Brumbies don't win
I will never still go to it, cause we are having fun
Cheering for a team, in the game they play in heaven
Sue'.  Back to Johnny,
Johnny'.  Ok, now we are just about to start the match, so take break, and on the other side Brumbies night live will bring on the action
The crowd yell from behind, a big cheer
Half time queensland reds 17
                  ACT. Brumbies. 9

Johnny'.  Welcome back to the Canberra stadium and the reds are leading by 17 points
To 9 and the 17 points were consisted of two tries to the reds by (Aidan Toua) and (Lachie Turner) and Quade cooper scores 3 goals for the reds and nick white and Jesse mogg scores for the Brumbies, and it is still in the Brumbies reach, but it is going to be tough
We will need to at least get two tries to be in with a great start to this season, and now here is show setter Sue longways with today's speeches, here goes

Sue'.   Ok well the Brumbies are down now, and we need to really let up a great speech
So come on dudes,,let's party, hey dude, ok, so first speech by 24 year old Adam
Adam'.    We are the mighty Brumbies
We play here with so much pride
We are the best in the ACT
Yeah, we are really the best
I want the Brumbies to win tonight
No, why have it any other way
So come on ole Brumbies, and fight' em ya Brumbies
We need to get 'em, and slice them up
Yeah mate yeah, we will win tonight
We are 17 - 9 down but who cares we are the best team in the land

Sue'.  Ok thanks Adam and now here is Bert Navarak with a speech
Bert'.  Ok we are gathered here in Canberra stadium
At half time where the opposition are leading us 17 -9
And I am not really a Brumbies fan, neh, I am the devil to the Brumbies
If I stay, the Brumbies will lose, so then the Brumbies choir came in
And said, well yes, well yes, this man is not our fan
Bert'.  No I won't leave cool people support their team ya knoThe Brumbies choir'.  Yeah, that is right, we don't want you hear
You see we are spoiling your reputation mate
Bert' my reps ok, I am staying all night, I will be back to punnish ya if the reds lose
Sue' ok dudes back to Johnny
Johnny'.  Ok on the other side of break, the second half of Brumbies and reds
Reds         27
ACT.         17
Johnny'. Well oh well the Brumbies lose the first Brumbies night live for the season
But in that second half Jesse Mogg scored one try, but the reds scored one try as well by
Chris feauai Mogg scored two goals, while Greg Holmes, Quade cooper and it was a great match and the Brumby of the match this week, to make the speech, here is Jesse Mogg
Jesse'.   Members of the writers cafe and also people who are interested, I have scored a bit tonight, but our team didn't win
Ii really would have liked if we were on top, at the start
But sometimes it's hard to make that happen
Other teams want to win as well
And the reds are playing well this last year
And they played well tonight, it was fantastic
To be our there, but we were on the wrong side
Of the football score, but we are going to win
Pretty soon, I just feel it in my bones, buddy, boy
Johnny'.  Ok thank you Jesse Mogg, and Sue that was a pretty dismal performance
By the Brumbies
Sue'.    Yeah, I think that all the fun we had tonight, was put together by AAA, and
Yeah, this will be great, yeah the reds 27 beating the ACT 17, it is going to be cool


Sent from my iPad

One of the more ambitious ventures in Irish fashion is taking place inWaterford at the Lismore Atelier. A social enterprise project that began a year ago to help revive manufacturing skills in Ireland, it is located in a former library building in the historic town. The workshop is now humming with state-of-the-art machines assembling clothes – cutting, sewing, overlocking, buttonholing, hemming, pressing and finishing.

Training in production and sewing skills is also given thanks to a €80,000 investment from the local council and the education and training board (ETB). Managing all this activity is Limerick School of Art and Design graduate Maggie Danaher, who lives locally.

The results can be seen in Mary Gregory’s 34-piece autumn/winter collection which has impressed all who see it for the quality, not just of its fabrics but its finish and attention to detail. An international Irish stylist based in Italy could not believe the collection had been made in Ireland, when viewing it on a recent visit.

Even calling it an “atelier”, the French word for workshop or studio, attests to its commitment to be as good internationally as any sought-after facilities inFrance or Italy. Gregory and her husband, Aidan McCarthy, a skilled tailor who worked for the fashion designer Patrick Howard in Dublin for 10 years in the 1970s, researched methods and machinery used by the top Italian companies who make for brands such as Gucci and Stella McCartney, with the aim of reproducing them in Ireland.

“I wanted to prove it could be done here,” says Gregory. “We can make clothes to this standard but it takes time, skill and investment,” she says. The plan is to attract other Irish designers to the facility which they hope will be ready by next year when a skilled production manager and sample and production machinists can provide the requisite top class service – presumably at competitive prices.

Currently Lismore Atelier has a tailor who samples for Victoria Beckham and Comme des Garçons who is brought in on a contract basis along with a production machinist. Gregory describes Lismore as the perfect place for a designer to be completely focussed and more accessible than places in Italy.

Gregory, who started making clothes at the age of six and developed a successful career in the 1980s and 1990s, was known for the strong visual effect of her designs. She moved with McCarthy to Lismore more than a decade ago and concentrated on rearing their two sons, restoring a 19th-century house in Villierstown while also working as visual and design director of the Maison & Chateau group. Her new collections remain true to her aesthetic of form and fabric with an emphasis on architectural shapes with embellishment and detail. The fabrics are luxurious and include grosgrain, double crepe, wool and silks with notable finesse of finish.

The collection is now in the International Designer Rooms in Brown Thomas where Gregory will be on hand on Saturdays to show it or by appointment.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses

maybe i never had the right words.
maybe that is the true problem.
maybe it was that i could never say everything that you needed to hear.

let me tell you a story.

when i was eight, my family always got together on christmas to exchange gifts.
my family is bursting at the seams, with aunts and uncles and grandparents and
second cousins and my aunt’s stepmother’s adopted niece and
everyone crams into one house, around one tree.
we do a name draw at thanksgiving, and everyone buys one present to give to one person.
i wasn’t supposed to open my present until everyone was together,
but i did.
and i was so embarrassed, at eight years old, to have broken the rules,
even though no one cared at all.
it was a tea set.
small, perfect for an eight year old, with cups and spoons and plates and a dish for the sugar.
i never could look at that tea set without feeling guilt,
and when it finally broke, i was relieved.
it had been picked out for me by a cousin of mine, and i thought that it was beautiful,
but i broke the rules.
now, on christmas, even though we no longer get together with all of my family to give gifts,
i still make sure that i am in line,
that i am not breaking any rules at all.

on christmas this year, i tried to sleep in and avoid thinking of you,
because you were going to be talking with your family,
and sierra was going to be talking to isaac,
and i was so unbelievably jealous.
and i wanted to drive over to your house and demand to see you,
but that would be breaking the rules, and besides that,
it wasn’t my place.  
christmas is for family, after all. not for old friends who are young and foolish still.

that night, i went and saw the third hobbit movie,
and i cried and kept crying.
i picked one dwarf, the one played by aidan turner who is gorgeous and great,
and i asked that he live.
and then the elf girlfriend played by kate from lost was there and i just broke down.
because they were perfect and not supposed to work out,
and they wanted to break the rules but some rules you cannot break.
yes, i am foolish.
i know that.
yes, i cried over the pain of a fictional elf when she asked for the love to be taken away,
because it hurt too much to bear.

but if there is one thing that i have learned in all of life as a foolish person,
it is this:
you take what is unbearable,
and you bear it.

there are no other options.

even though this love i hold for you is painful and sometimes makes it hard to breathe,
i will bear it, and i will learn to accept heartbreak as a part of this life.

it is valentine’s day on saturday, and i want so badly to have someone to hold me,
because yes, it is a stupid holiday, but genuine affection is not,
and i miss that.
i’ve never had it but i miss it.
isn’t that strange?

but it is possible, apparently, and it does not stop hurting.
i wish to have this love taken from me, i wish to see you replaced in my heart,
but i will take what is unbearable,
and i will bear it.

They've had to go.
I know, they couldn't stay here with me
I know, they had to go.

I remember being children, and my friend Aidan, he said,
"Of course we'll be friends til we're dead."
Must have been somewhat true, cause when we parted a part of me died.
And since I've had a hole form inside.

And now that I've tried to slowly fill in the gaps with all of you.
I've noticed I can't do it, it's not about what I do.
It's been about the connections I've gained and collected,
the type of connection that's strong on both ends and perspectives.

And from my point of view I'm still here and all alone.
Never thought I'd lose until it was gone.
Sometimes I just want to hurry to the end,
as if erasing myself will make my wrongs perfect again.

for Aidan, Noah, Mary Ann*

The boy lived in a town by himself.  Because he didn’t know his own name, he did not name the town.  The town had one street that circled the town and there were no houses or buildings.  The boy was never hungry, and if he was, he’d never been hungry enough to know it.  He was thirsty often and because he’d had a dream about his body being full of water he’d spit in his hand and open his hand to the sun when the sun was out and then drink the warm spit.  He was not afraid to leave the town but still he did not leave it.  Perhaps he was its bravery.

I don't have a lot left to say.
My poetic battery is all but spent.
I leave this place with hopes that I make something of myself.
The path I will take is long and winding.
Over the last few months I have made invaluable bonds with people I did not know could impact my life with a magnitude in which they did. I met musicians who pushed my work to become so much more than I could have ever hoped to achieve on my own. I lost a few friends, I strained a few relationships.
I found love in the form of a soul that mirrored mine - the mirror in which I saw this reflection bore the image of someone I'd want to be with no matter where or how. Nothing will stop me from  ensuring the continuity of the feelings we have for each other. The spark burns bright. I will not let it reduce itself to a wisp of smoke.

Batrisyia,

I know you'll read this at some point. I know I've already written you a letter. And I know there will be times when my words are not enough - but words will be all that we have to rely on for the coming months. I need you to know now that I will always have time for you. We will game every night and joke and laugh and make ******* noises over whatever platform we choose to communicate through.

I know this will be tough, but if it were easy then there would be no accomplishment in it. You and I meld together without effort. We fight sometimes but we can never stay mad at each other. In the end, when all is said and done, I will always see you for the vibrant soul you are. Nothing that happens could possibly make you lesser in my eyes.

What is 2 years compared to 3 lifetimes?

We will find out for ourselves.

I love you.

- Aidan

for Aidan*

my son at nine years takes his easel out to the deck to paint from his dream moon above lake.  in spirit, I tell him it’s about to rain.  I am afraid aloud my words will run together.  in the dream he saw eighteen moons.  it won’t remember he’s painted one.

Be the jet fuel to my memes.
Be the cheese to my pizza base
Be the one who melts my steel beams
Be the finish to my race
Be the laugh to my bad jokes.
Be the rhyme in my every line.
Be the flames that I could stoke
Be the minutes to my time.
Be the janji to my melayu
I hope you feel the same way too.

Let me be the love you feel
Let my lungs breathe you in song
Let me show that this is real
Let me learn to do no wrong
Let me sing my faith in this
Let me make your world go still
Let me wait for that first kiss
I won't back down, I never will.


I don't have long, I am an old man
So I'll ask, as best as I can
Trisyia please, hear Aidan A
I'm asking you, from today
To be by my side, till this life ends
Be my world - be my girlfriend.

Why does my fear overrun?
I just want to be honest
And end all the forsaken lies,
But, again, my mind screams and cries,
Looking for a way to hold
Our currently standing ties.

Why be such a coward
When people say
That I’m a fearless Leo,
A Lionlike leader
That fears none which precede her,
And will stand for her rights
As well as uphold her dignity
Across these eternal nights.

I am not a lion...
I am just Aidan.

canoe sunset rides on spider lake.
1am star sneakouts to lay on the pontoon and talk.
running to walmart in the rain.
"welcome to caaaammmppppp"
first night frybread.
take me home country roads three guitar jam sesh
letters back and forth.
worship at the ridge. bless.
blair lake sunsets.
12 hour naps in sick room.
mighty mighty.
bonkers.
ducking underwater to escape the horse flies.
kaelynn flipping out of the kayak in baggy jean shorts.
seeing sarah after four years.
running to AO with Dustin and Ruby.
mirror selfies with rachel.
mario kart everything.
talking with meredith in the hearth room.
so many games of quarters.
joy's snickety snacks
towel over the head with sophie and joy
cassie being the speaker my first time counseling.
laurel's blue water song
laying, crying, and talking with katie the last night
AMEN across the lake
cabin adventures to star gaze on pontoon.
running to matthew and rachel with tear filled eyes after talking with amber
aidan's long 10pm kind thoughtful and affirming texts