Corporeal Mist

The partition separating
life from death is
so tenuous.

The unbelievable fragility
of our organism suggests
a vision on a screen:

a kind of mist condenses itself
into
a human shape,

lasts a moment, and
scatters.

- Czeslaw Milosz
(found in The Sun, Sunbeam, August 2015 | Issue 476)

Loss

The thing I've been thinking about the most
is loss.

The losses experienced in life,
yes,
but really
the meaning
we all make of our losses.

Deaths of loved ones,
the phases of lives hurtling by,
jobs and relationships we never imagined
would end.

All of it.

Among other things,
our lives are compendiums of
loss and change
and what we make of it.

-- Joel Lovell
( edited quote, from article about Stephen Colbert )

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting 
their bad advice–

though the whole house
 began to tremble

and you felt the old tug
 at your ankles.


“Mend my life!”
 each voice cried.


But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried
 with its stiff fingers 
at the very foundations,

though their melancholy
 was terrible.


It was already late
 enough,
and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen
 branches and stones.


But little by little,
 as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn
 through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly
 recognized as your own,

that kept you company
 as you strode deeper and deeper
 into the world,

determined to do
 the only thing you could do–

determined to save
 the only life you could save.

-- Mary Oliver

On Softness

God, I am tired of writing about you.
Downbeat. Upbeat. A pretty metaphor about geese
and Indian Summer.

I am so sad but I am still shaving my legs.
No one is touching my shins but I still
rub coconut oil into my ankles after
I shower. I spray rosewater onto my cheeks until
I glow. I am so soft and I run my fingertips over my
stomach when I miss you, palms whisper soft like kissing
a stranger, a hundred peach fuzz hairs, duckling
new and I love every one (everyone).
I am soft as the sweet, wet bruise on an overripe plum.
Soft as grayblack winter slush. Soft as the flame
that licks your passing palm.

Once, I slept beside you so often that when I smelled
perfume on your pillow it was my own.

Once, I burned myself boiling water in your kitchen and you
cupped your hands around my fingers like you’d captured a moth,
your face like my hand was something fragile and winged.

Once, we were arguing and you said “God, we are married,”
but I don’t think you meant me to remember that.

When I think of you, I think of sunrise, the way we always
fought it to keep talking even when I was sleeping with
my phone in my hand.

When I think of you, I think of heavy blankets,
hot coffee, a valley of pillows.

I told you I am good at math but I do not know how to add up a year.
Still, next week I may miss you less.

For now, I do my laundry, kiss my cousin’s
baby girl on both cheeks, put on lipgloss just to
play piano in my robe.

I still write you into all my lists, try to stitch
you into the bindings of my books. Once, in a poem,
I called you a church but you are not an image
about the fragility of stone. Missing you is not a tornado.
We are neither the wolf nor the lamb in its teeth.
We are not epic, not myth, not legend. We are not simile.
There is nothing we are like or as.

Here is the truth:
Once, we were two people.
Once, we curled toward each other like a pair of parentheses
around something secret.

Here is the truth:
I am still softening my edges.
I am still wearing the same perfume.
I am still hoping that I smell like home
even when home is not with you.

Tomorrow I will miss you less.
God, I am tired of writing about you.

- J.S.

You deserve to discover the joys of life

When you
find yourself drowning in
self-hate,

remind yourself - you
weren’t born feeling this way;

remind yourself - somewhere
in your journey
some person or experience
sent you the message
that there was something wrong with
who you are,

and you then internalized
those messages and
took them on
as your truth.

But that hate isn’t yours to carry, and
those judgments aren’t about you.

And in the same way that you
learned
to think badly of yourself, you can
learn
to think new, self-loving and accepting thoughts.

You can learn to challenge
those beliefs, take away
their power, and reclaim
your own.

It won’t be easy, and
it won’t happen over night.

But it is possible.

And it starts when
you decide
that there has to be more
to life than this pain you feel.

It starts
when you decide
that
you deserve to discover it.

-- Danielle Keopke
(arranged, edited quote)