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"This is what time travel is. It's looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time." - Gabrielle Zevin, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

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"A story is not like real life; it's like a table with just a few things on it." - George Saunders, "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain"

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"The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time." - Gabrielle Zevin, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

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"Life is neither tidy nor done; it is doing." - Imani Perry, "Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People"

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Do Not Ask Your Children to Strive

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

William Martin

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Downhearted

Six horses died in a tractor-trailer fire.

There. That's the hard part. I wanted

to tell you straight away so we could

grieve together. So many sad things,

that's just one on a long recent list

that loops and elongates in the chest,

in the diaphragm, in the alveoli. What

is it they say, heart-sick or downhearted?

I picture a heart lying down on the floor

of the torso, pulling up the blankets

over its head, thinking the pain will

go on forever (even though it won't).

The heart is watching Lifetime movies

and wishing, and missing all the good

parts of her that she has forgotten.

The heart is so tired of beating

herself up, she wants to stop it still,

but also she wants the blood to return,

wants to bring in the thrill and wind of the ride,

the fast pull of life driving underneath her.

What the heart wants? The heart wants

her horses back.

Ada Limón

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Elegy

I have turned over

all fifty-two cards

on the kitchen table.

Still, I think

you must be hiding

somewhere in the deck.

Billy Collins

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"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love -- whether we call it friendship or family or romance -- is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light." - James Baldwin, "Nothing Personal"

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"My father saw stars. My son sees stars. The earth rolls beneath our feet. We lurch ahead, and one day we have walked this far." - Martín Espada, from "Of the Threads that Connect the Stars"

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"Wanting and enjoying does not make you dangerous and it does not make you bad." - Nina MacLaughlin, "Wake, Siren"

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"Because what I did with my one short beautiful life--was lose it on a winning streak." - Ocean Vuong, "Time is a Mother"

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At A Waterfall, Reykjavik

I still feel like

the world

is a piece

of bread

I'm holding

out half

to you.

Eileen Myles

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"Yes many and beautiful things." - Sappho, trans. Anne Carson, "If Not, Winter"

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"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive." - James Baldwin

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"It isn't sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the length of our lives." - Gabrielle Zevin, "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

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"One of the most troublesome things in life is that what you do or do not want has very little to do with what does or does not happen." - Lemony Snicket, "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival"

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"But mostly we're forgetting that we're dead stars too, my mouth is full of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising--to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, towards what's larger within us, towards how we were born. Look, we are not unspectacular things. We've come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?...What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain for the safety of others, for earth, if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified, if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds, rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?" - Ada Limón, from "Dead Stars"