“Deliciously written”? Oh, I do like that! Thank you very much, Tuttysan. I’m not sure if it was so much ‘painfully wrong’ as ‘painfully right’ – some things would be easier to get over if I could think of them as mistakes, learn from them and move on. When one has the mindset of “but I got it RIGHT this time, damn it!” there are just too many reasons to keep trying.

Ah, Tanae, I would love to ‘keep’ writing but, depressingly (for me), I stopped and can’t seem to start again.

Thank you for your encouragement, however. I’m storing all of these kind words of yours and everyone else’s in my mind as a kind gaffa tape. Isn’t that stuff supposed to be able to fix anything?

Hmmmm… the sting of the painfully wrong?! Deliciously written. Loved it!

your words do something to me… it’s almost as if youre speaking directly from my heart.

“I’m buying a white casket
to hold the weight of all of those kisses
and a little urn in which to sprinkle
those cremated smiles”

keep writing honey.. your style in invigorating.

A quote from one of my favourite authors, Jeanette Winterson, reads, “You can bury what you like, but if it’s not dead when you bury it, don’t hope for a quiet life.”

I have a very disquieting, haunted life!

The turmoil of ending a relationship that has held your heart captive…Now that’s needs the Lord’s prayer…a thousand times..

Ghosts creeping up from the earth under the floorboards and curving in gentle spirals as they creep up in hopes they’ll catch me sleeping are what keep me writing. I hope to trap them in the ink, wisp by wisp, until I can sleep without dreaming. (And now I want to make that a poem. I told you I recycle my letters into poems!)

This one, I loved. I loved it differently, quietly. Most of your poems are like starbursts or dropping off of waterfalls for for me, this one was like the arrival of a girl in an old fashioned white dress, creeping up on me while I was finding shapes in the clouds, holding out a ceramic box in her hands to say, ‘these, these were your dreams. My dreams. Our dreams.’ It wasn’t the sharp colors that birth worlds or wondering if I’d come up in time to breathe again in this life…this was the soft certainty of knowing I wasn’t alone, even in abandonment.

And you wonder why I plant you jasmine?

The temptation to offer up some “reasons” of why you plant me jasmine is fairly strong. All reasons being terribly unkind to myself. But, since that would inadvertently impugn your judgement, I’m simply going to say “Thank you” again

I’m still beaming, thinking of Lucien and your kindness!

Well…the reasons are very simple.

1. You are an amazingly talented writer (even if you’re on hiatus) who has shared many, many beautiful, breathtaking, captivating things with me. Believe it or not, it can be quite hard to make me take the leap outward to feel something (and was all the more so when I first started my blog and ranacross your poetry). I have always most loved the people who could entice me to take that leap even when I was tired, even when it seemed my soul was fraying, even when whatever nerves feel emotion felt so raw they were bleeding. And not one of your poems has failed to make jump.

2. You asked for green things. I have always had plants with names that I cherished, petted, and otherwise adored. I thought you might appreciate one. I like making people happy. Especially people I like.

Now, all that said – only one of us gets to be tragically insecure and I’m incapable of believing in anything but other people (okay and gods, plants, pets…generally things that are not me).

So…I love you, you’re awesome, you get a plant. *L* Be happy dammit! You are well worth it.

I’m sure you’ve seen a sun’s beam piercing through clouds in the past… well, that’s me just now, reading your comment

I’ll shut up now and just beam and be incredibly grateful to you, okay?