“I see that I must give what I most need.”

Anne Michaels

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“Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart's strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.”


“That they were torn from mistakes they had no chance to fix; everything unfinished. All the sins of love without detail, detail without love. The regret of having spoken, of having run out of time to speak. Of hoarding oneself. Of turning one’s back too often in favour of sleep. I tried to imagine their physical needs, the indignity of human needs grown so extreme they equal your longing for wife, child, sister, parent, friend. But truthfully I couldn’t even begin to imagine the trauma of their hearts, of being taken in the middle of their lives. Those with young children. Or those newly in love, wrenched from that state of grace. Or those who had lived invisibly, who were never know.”


“Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.”


“I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.”


“Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.”


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