- At some point, you will hug someone so hard that you cry and the two of you will feel as if you are becoming one person. Hold on a little longer.
- There are so many books left to read and books left to write and, no matter what you may believe, your story is worth writing down.
- The sun doesn’t shine some days but, when it does, everybody’s day is brighter because of it. Think of yourself as the sun and ask yourself where the earth would be without you.
- Fireworks don’t display their colors immediately after they are launched. It takes time before their true beauty is revealed. Some things take time.
- Some time in your life, you will hold someone’s hand and they will tell you that they love you or that they need you or both. You will begin to feel as if you were never broken.
- Music.
- Think of all the lazy Sundays or Wednesdays or any days where you decide to sleep in and stay in your pajama pants and fluffy socks all day.
- For movie marathons with your best friend where you forget to watch the movies because you’re too busy catching up and listening to stories and bitching about all the people who the two of you can’t stand.
- Sometimes creatures outgrow their shells and need to find a new one. Take a deep breath and find a new person or place to call home. This time, try considering your own body your home.
- Snakes shed layers of their skin Maybe you need to do the same.
- Some lizards and starfish can regenerate lost limbs. What many people don’t know is that humans can do the same. No matter how much life hurts you, you will always grow back.
- Trees drop their leaves every single year but they always wait around for spring to come so that they can bloom again. Every year they come back stronger than before.
- There are beautiful things in this world that you can’t even imagine. Mountains, rivers, canyons, auroras, oceans, landmarks, cities, people, etc. Do not end your own life until you have seen them all.
Category: Poetry
“To His Lost Lover” by Simon Armitage
Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other
he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost
unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,
how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush
at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –
two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –
walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.
How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips
from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit
or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart
was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.
Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.
And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,
then another,
or knew her
favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,
and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair
into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved
when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home
through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand
to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.
And never almost cried,
and never once described
an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt
nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh
wept by the heart,
where it hurts,
or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.
Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,
a pilot light,
or stayed the night,
or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is
I like you.
I just might do.”
How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand
were a solid ball
of silver foil
and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.
But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.
And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.
Simon Armitage, from The Book of Matches (Faber, 1993)
“Still Life: An Argument” by Edward Hirsch
Listen, it only takes a moment
to move, to knot ourselves
together like the ends of a rope
longing to be knotted together,
but let’s avoid it, let’s wait.
Ropes, even the sturdiest ropes,
pull, they strain, struggle, eventually
they break. But think of it;
in a still life a knife
pauses above a platter of
meat, it only takes a second, and
poof it becomes the idea of a knife,
the drawing of a knife suspended
in the air like a guillotine
about to weightlessly drop on the
neck of a murderer and send him
shrieking into oblivion forever,
but it never happens, the knife
keeps falling and falling, but never
falls. That knife could be us.
The milk on the table is always
about to spill, the meat could be
encased in wax paper to be
protected from flies, but it’s
not, it’s unnecessary, the flies
threaten to descend on the
exposed meat, but they can’t, they’re
no longer flies, but a painting of flies,
the blood pooled on the platter
of meat never evaporates, it can’t;
look, it’s still there; and if I
never touch you, well then, we never die.
Listen, even lovers have still lives,
have whole months when they hang
together like moths on an unlit
light bulb, waiting for the bulb to light,
but if it never does then the moths
survive, meat should be allowed
to sit on the table forever
without being devoured by flies
and if that’s not possible, well
then we still have this picture,
the still life not of how it will be,
but of how it was, for the knife and the meat
and the flies, and for us the night we
hesitated together. From now on, love,
we will always be about to destroy
each other, always about to touch.
— “Still Life: An Argument” by Edward Hirsch
Words ... for the Time Being 