“.... Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”
— Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
“.... compared to even a small star / the moon is tiny / it is not God but the flower behind God I treasure”
— Prayer by Kaveh Akbar, found in Calling A Wolf A Wolf
“.... That something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”
— Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
“.... Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
— Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda, found in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
“.... I am sorry / to hold you again / for so long / I am in the mood / to be forgotten.”
— For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut by Hanif Abdurraqib
“.... A man takes his sadness and throws it away / but he’s still left with his hands.”
— Booth Theory by Richard Siken, found in Crush