Your heart is a planet. I can see that you are from the sky.

Well, I am so sensitive and I am very fragile but so is everything else, and living with a dangerous amount of sensitivity is sort of what I have to do sometimes, and it is so very much better than living with no gusto at all. And I’d rather live with a tender heart, because that is the key to feeling the beat of all of the other hearts.

I am feeling very certain that there is absolutely no good reason to ever be disrespectful, no matter how upset you are. I do not need to hear bullying voices ever again and there is no reason to ever do that sort of emotional violence to anyone. There is no good rationale behind calling names or being tricky or cutting or scary or to say a ton of swears. That was never my style, but I let other people do it to me, and then I did something to them, too. And now, no.

It occurs to me, even as I’m not sure what’s left of me, that I can use what is still alive to really behave in a way that I admire. It occurs to me that I can have every single feeling I need to have without ever trying to overpower someone or win something. it occurs to me that if anyone is ever here again by my side I will do my best, and if that doesn’t work out, I will leave. I will not do my half-best and stay for a ridiculous amount of time.

In the last light of a long day, I sit on a chair on my porch and watch the sky drain colors down and out and I realize I want to hear my voice and only mine. Not the voice of my voice within a cacophony of old pains. Just mine, now.

With every small choice, the world was emerging. What would I like, from all of it? I didn’t tell Kathleen how dear it was to me that she told me this sticky-flower fact in total earnestness. I didn’t tell her that even though everything about me really points to liking things like flowers on animals’ faces, I was pleased that she did not assume. I was pleased that she made sure

You are dear to yourself in the morning and it is the morning now. It is very private to have such a love for yourself. Closer, closer to the curtain. How funny, your face is right right against the curtain now. How funny to know what side of it you are on! You are asleep! How wonderful to pay attention. That our young friends loved us, that we scared them a little, that we felt young inside ourselves after making such a wild request, and that we’d looked to each other in that back seat and could have died then from such radical happiness. We whispered, “Should we just collide and burst into atomic dust here in the back seat?”

My father says, “After a while you understand that you can create and raise the child, but the spirit…the spirit comes from the universe.”

This is also one of the first ways that I perceived power in another person: Information about art and nature feels like the best stuff to have, and if you have it, it is powerful and excellent to pass it on. That is an act of power, showing what you know, giving it to another person, realizing that as you spread it, you get to keep it but watch it grow, and by watching others have it, you learn new things about the original thing.

He has spoken the most important thing, which is “Here we are again in a new day. I want you to see it with me.” And this description above is an example of how you can gaze on yourself with love when nobody is there to do that for you, and how you can make it so that your own loving gaze is truthful and not obsessive or vain. You can wake up like this, be this, and tell yourself that this is an example of how a day can start on Earth.

This is what makes my mother my mother. She loves the flower and she wants me to know this flower, but she will only smell it once, and then give it to me for unlimited sniffing pleasure and she will be happy about it all. [..] my thoughts about how I saw her became an instantaneous prayer of gratitude and awe for her style of motherhood and unique humanity. And inside of myself, I knelt down in honor of this style of care that is her brand of nurturing, care that urges creativity and thinking, that is selfless and classy. It says, “The more you give, the more you have, the more new things you are a part of, the more you are truly alive.”

My vulnerability is natural and permissible and beautiful to me, and it should remind you of your responsibility to behave like a friend to me and the world.

I died after living more of my life with you than I lived with just myself.

I see it. I know it. That nature makes art and I am a creation and I make things. This is an expansive fact that I could never measure, and it calms me. The elemental companionship of light and air make it so beautiful on those leaves that when I turn in my chair to really look, the leaves are just there existing, and I feel my heart break down even more and I say, Good, let it fall away, and look, look, everything is always remaking itself and so are you. Everything is art and nature and so are you.

I am connected to eternity and I am part of everything and although I am with all of it, I am still different from anything and everything. I am an example of a specific way of spending time and feeling existence in this world.

Place a shell in your shower. Get a whole plant in there. Put a geranium in your kitchen. Stand in your space and howl out. Bring it in or go out and see it. Wildness is the mother, the first thing, not a lurking predator. Wildness is holy. I am a geranium that is hardy and wild, but I want to sleep in a neat little pot. I belong in a castle that was built with the determination and ingenuity of a person who was deeply in love.

Wanting to be watched but also wanting to be watched, like by a guardian, like that the whole world wants to watch you to make sure you are safe.

A bathrobe is a wonderful present, so is jam, so are flowers.

I am supposed to be touched. I can’t wait to find the person who will come into the kitchen just to smell my neck and get behind me and hug me and breathe me in and make me turn around and make me kiss his face and put my hands in his hair even with my soapy dishwater drips. I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?

Preferred: Lovebugs, creatures, boo-boos, rigorous thinkers, wild-hearts, gentle-minds, pets.

Clean a room and tidy it with an air of fairness, like you are doing what is fair for the room. Say something like “There you are, now,” to the room when you are done fussing over it. Sit in the room for at least a few minutes and listen and do that and only that, which is actually hard and different than spacing out. It is hard to sit still and listen to everything you can listen to on purpose.

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.

Turn your head to the side and give yourself a little kiss on the shoulder. Wash your face and hands. Put on an outfit of all one color.

I will never ever go into the internet to look for anything that I feel that I really need, except for turtlenecks and sheets and candles, and even then I will do that in a very small circle of places that I know have exactly what I want. But I want to fall in love, so I’ll give it an earnest try.