Joanna Klink, From The Nightfields

Joanna Klink, from The Nightfields

Our Experience of Grief is Unique as a Fingerprint

Adonis, from “Desire Moving Through Maps of Matter” (tr. Khaled Mattawa) / Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love / Kahlil Gibran, from “On Joy and Sorrow” / Adonis, from “Desire Moving Through Maps of Matter” (tr. Khaled Mattawa) / Naomi Shihab Nye, from “Kindness”

Hello!!! I just found your blog and I love it so much!!! I love that you have such a wonderful library of poetry and literature 💕 poetry is the best way to connect our heart into concrete terms and can help us through the worst of it all. I love the whole feel of your blog!! You are a gift 💕 I’ve seen a few people ask for some poems, and if I may, I’d like to request for a few from your vast collection on how love never really dies. I recently went through a really peaceful break up and I’ve been trying to cope with that fact that I’m not angry at him and that I’m never not going to love him. I need some poetry for my aching heart. Thank you if you are able to, love! I hope you have a lovely day 💕

— John Berger, Will it be a Likeness? from The Shape of a Pocket

— John Cage to Merce Cunningham, June 29 1943

— Adonis, Selected Poems; “Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea” (tr. Khaled Mattawa)

“But whatever, whenever, however this ends / I want you to know right now, / I love you forever.”

— Andrea Gibson, from The Madness Vase; “How It Ends”

— Mary Oliver, from “Mysteries, yes”

“someone I love is praying in another language / I don’t know all the words but I know / what it means—”

— Linnette Reeman, from “The New Jersey Devil Considers Parallels,” The New Jersey Devil Washes the Blood Off (and other vignettes) (L'Éphémère Review micro-chapbook, 2018)

— Nikki Giovanni, from an interview with Cynthia Adina Kirkwood for Los Angeles Times, Dec 4, 1985

— Aracelis Girmay, “I Am Not Ready To Die Yet”

THERE IS A LIGHT AND IT NEVER GOES OUT:

I. "I Still Don't Know Your Name" by Maria Eugenia Bravo, (August, 1991) translated by Dinah Livingstone | II. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) dir. Stephen Chbosky | III. "Goodbye" by Bob Hicok | IV. La Femme Rousse (2015) by Julie Pieffer | V. "Thank You When I'm an Axe" from Bute: Poems by Emily Skaja | VI. Dare Alla Luce by Amy Friend | VI. "Anthem" from The Future (1992) by Leonard Cohen | VIII. Carol (2015) dir. Todd Haynes | IX. "Daguerreotype in Old Age" (1976) by Margaret Atwood | X. Egon Schiele | XI. Paris 9:21 pm (2015) by Leonardo Pucci | XII. Fruit of Life by Megan Reiker | XIII. Vincent Van Gogh

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013, p. 359)