Something that touched my heart after a long, long time. Salute to Atwood for these beautiful words. Brought tears to my eyes.

Your children cut their hands … by Margaret Atwood  

Your children cut their hands on glass
by reaching through the mirror
where the beloved one was hiding.

You weren’t expecting this:
you thought they wanted happiness,
not laceration.

You thought the happiness
would appear simply, without effort
or any kind of work,

like a bird call
or a pathside flower
or a school of silvery fish

but now they’ve cut themselves
on love, and cry in secret,
and your own hands go numb

because there’s nothing you can do,
because you didn’t tell them not to
because you didn’t think

you needed to
and now there’s all this broken glass
and your children stand red-handed

still clutching at moons and echoes
and emptiness and shadow,
the way you did.

Life defined

"Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.'' — Arthur Rimbaud

But dreams come slow and they go so fast.....

Well, You only need the light when it's burning low,
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow,
Only know you love her when you let her go.

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home.
Only know you love her when you let her go,
And you let her go.

Staring at the bottom of your glass
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go so fast
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies

But you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go

Staring at the ceiling in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your heart
'Cause Love comes slow and it goes so fast

Well you see her when you fall asleep
But never to touch and never to keep
Cause you loved her too much and you dived too deep

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go ooooh ooooh oh no

And you let her go
ooooh ooooh oh no

Well you let her go

ooooh ooooh oh no

Cause you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go

Cause you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go

And you let her go

Passenger

Words

I wait in patience
Often in utter boredom,
For words to flow out of my pen
Like the cinematic multiple blossoming
Of a dozen red roses —
Words as red as the blood
We both pledged
When we knew no fear nor death.

Bored by Margaret Atwood

"All those times I was bored out of my mind. Holding the log while he sawed it. Holding the string while he measured, boards, distances between things, or pounded stakes into the ground for rows and rows of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored) weeded. Or sat in the back of the car, or sat still in boats, sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel he drove, steered, paddled. It wasn't even boredom, it was looking, looking hard and up close at the small details. Myopia. The worn gunwales, the intricate twill of the seat cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying bristles on the back of his neck. Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes I would. The boring rhythm of doing things over and over, carrying the wood, drying the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what the animals spend most of their time at, ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels, shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed such things out, and I would look at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier all the time then, although it more often rained, and more birdsong? I could hardly wait to get the hell out of there to anywhere else. Perhaps though boredom is happier. It is for dogs or groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored. Now I would know too much. Now I would know."

Yet another favorite from Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I Don’t Feel at Home Where I Am

I don’t feel at home where I am, or where I spend time; only where, beyond counting, there’s freedom and calm, that is, waves, that is, space where, when there, you consist of pure freedom, which, seen, turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone, to pebbles and sand … where life’s mean- ing lies buried, that never let one come within cannon shot yet. From cloud-covered wells untold pour color and light, a fete of cupids and Ledas in gold. That is, silk and honey and sheen. That is, boon and quiver and call. That is, all that lives to be free, needing no words at all.

:Regina Derieva