you need a lover who can set you free…

We need wild, free souls in love and friendship, the kind who are not afraid to bite us into awakening and feeling. We need to stand tall in our full-blown humanity, vulnerable and passionate, willing to jump in with another and take the fall.

We need to be that openness.

Let us not be afraid of revealing ourselves as we are, because we are cosmic miracles. Let us not shrink back upon being truly seen, but grow taller and swell wider with the pulse of life… Let us abandon ourselves to the pleasure of discovering another human being and to the pleasure of being discovered.

Why does this matter? Because we are never as guarded as when we are seeing someone who lights a spark within us—and there is never a better time to lay our guards down and speak our soft, sweet truth, backed by nothing but the infinite depth and yearning of our hearts.

We must become each other’s wild souls. We must howl to the moon in freedom and let our hearts speak out loud to pinch us back to life, to remind us that we are not the masks we put on; we are infinitely more. We must stop playing at the game of love and start loving instead.

   —Stefania Chihaia

black march…

I have a freind
At the end
Of the world.
His name is a breath

Of fresh air.
He is dressed in
Grey chiffon. At least
I think it is chiffon.
It has a
Peculiar look, like smoke.

It wraps him round
It blows out of place
It conceals him
I have not seen his face.

But I have seen his eyes, they are
As pretty and bright
As raindrops on black twigs
In March, and heard him say:

I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.

Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.

(Such a pretty time when the sky
Behind black twigs can be seen
Stretched out in one
Uninterrupted
Cambridge blue as cold as snow.)

But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:

Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you.

 

— Stevie Smith —

this is how you lose her…

This is how you lose her.

You lose her when you forget to remember the little things that mean the world to her: the sincerity in a stranger’s voice during a trip to the grocery store, the delight of finding something lost or forgotten like a sticker from when she was five, the selflessness of a child giving a part of his meal to another, the scent of new books in the store, the surprise short but honest notes she tucks in her journal and others you could only see if you look closely.

You must remember when she forgets.

You lose her when you don’t notice that she notices everything about you: your use of the proper punctuation that tells her continuation rather than finality, your silence when you’re about to ask a question but you think anything you’re about to say to her would be silly, your mindless humming when it is too quiet, your handwriting when you sign your name in blank sheets of paper, your muted laughter when you are trying to be polite, and more and more of what you are, which you don’t even know about yourself, because she pays attention.

She remembers when you forget.

You lose her for every second you make her feel less and less of the beauty that she is. When you make her feel that she is replaceable. She wants to feel cherished. When you make her feel that you are fleeting. She wants you to stay. When you make her feel inadequate. She wants to know that she is enough and she does not need to change for you, nor for anyone else because she is she and she is beautiful, kind and good.

You must learn her.

You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to.

You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept.

And, this is how you keep her.

— Junot Díaz —

letters to a young poet…

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is — solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate — ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

                                                                                                                   — Rilke

when we said yes (or, roads taken)…

road(s) takenAfterwards.

We lay like that for a time. It should have been awkward but each breath was… simple. Quiet. And this stillness brought with it a calm, a terrifying calm. Each freckle, each edge of stubble, each bead of sweat still shining on his forehead was a beacon to something I’d never seen before – a storm inside me I’d left for others to read about in some story, long ago left dusty on a shelf. But here, now: each breath softened hard edges, drawing us closer, revealing a fit I never knew possible.