Poem and Quotes of the Month
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the
hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their
hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and
whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping
the blinds in an open palm.
It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles
that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of
blunt knives, then of sharp knives.
It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch;
to love and let go again and again. It pesters to
remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back
what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a
cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously,
concretely, constructively.
I can’t do it, you say it’s killing me, but you
thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry,
you float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor’s
button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our
breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and
systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and
not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and
anger moment by moment balanced. (Marge Piercy)
"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps
the most difficult task of all . . . , the work for
which all other work is but preparation. It is a high
inducement to the individual to ripen . . . a great
exacting claim upon us, something that chooses us out
and calls us to vast things." (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Safety is most often compromised by hostility, along
with its verbal attacks, uncharitable characterizations,
blame, defensiveness, sullen withdrawals, and harsh
criticisms. . . The purpose of couples therapy is to
assist each person to access and embody more of his or
her essential self in intimate interaction and to be
freed from the rigidity of the (negative) limitations
that are continually reinforced in interactions with
their intimate partner." (Rob Fisher)
