Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all

And sweetest in the gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Sri Chinmoy

Love is not a thing to understand.
Love is not a thing to feel.
Love is not a thing to give and receive.
Love is a thing only to become
And eternally be.

As long as your heart remains
An ever-mounting aspiration-flame,
It makes no difference
What your weaknesses are.

Chloe Honum
Spring

Mother tried to take her life.
The icicles thawed.
The house, a wet coat
we couldn't put back on.

Still, the garden quickened,
the fields were firm.
Birds flew from the woods'
fingertips. Among the petals
and sticks and browning fruit,
we sat in the grass and
bickered, chained daisies, prayed.
All that falls is caught. Unless

it doesn't stop, like moonlight,
which has no pace to speak of,
falling through the cedar limbs,
falling through the rock.

Inside her ribcage city,
Lies an abandoned heart hotel,
Haunted with the memories,
Of a time it once knew well,
If you're quiet and imagine,
You can hear the closing doors,
The forgotten conversations,
And the footsteps on the floors,
It was open many years ago,
When she was still young and naive,
Believing if she gave enough,
She'd eventually receive,
Each day she cleaned and cooked,
To ensure comfort for her guests,
But as people kept arriving,
It grew heavy in her chest,
Eventually to hear herself,
She almost had to shout,
Over the people who had once moved in,
And then never moved out,

Although they'd faded from her life,
Their memories roamed the halls,
For she was so afraid of heartbreak,
That she clung onto them all,
But hotels aren't designed,
For everyone who comes, to stay,
And when you keep on cramming people in,
Something's going to give way,
And so the story goes,
Her heart hotel slowly closed down,
She learnt to let things go,
And moved in to a nicer town,
That she's doing so much better,
And she owns a cottage now,
Where the ones she loves the dearest,
Are the only guests she will allow.

Erin Hanson