Heartwood

Here’s an idea: All emotions start out as love. Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot. I have no regrets. I do not regret anything.

That real mother, the mother that you get, you've got to love her, there's no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission. It's the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She's the one you've got to bury. She's a mirage. She'll only break your heart.

The world and its people are too much for me. I am crushed between empathy and impotence. I don't think I'm important. Not at all! In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial. Then why was I given this heart? It is so much more than I need.

A reader is never lonely.

Your love dug me a kind of trench, a groove in the universe where I still go to mourn.

No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was.

Every human being imagines, but few disclose. Children are quick to share their strangest thoughts and inventions. They cease to do so only after the shaming or baffled reactions of adults, portraits of which the child hangs on her inner walls, until at last, she closes the gallery.

Dear Mother, You used to call me Sparrow. Why Sparrow? Well, because the woods are full of sparrows, and you loved everything outdoors. Songbirds, wildflowers, wind. You could read the weather like a poem. But why did I remind you of a sparrow and not another songbird? I never thought to ask. With their white cheeks and dingy underparts, plain brown sparrows are everywhere. They beg at outdoor tables and hop under city benches. They nest in chimneys and rafters and even tailpipes. Sparrows are not much to look at, but they’re smart. Canny. Tiny, feathered battle-axes. Sparrows are survivors. I like to think that’s what you meant… No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was…Mothers have a sixth sense. Their love is occult.

But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger. Some folks say, “Forgive yourself.” But who the hell can do that? It’s a goddamned conflict of interest.

understood the masochistic level of exposure a mother takes on the moment her child is born, how agonizing her position. Your response to life’s chaos was to over-function. You were a taskmaster, a list maker, a toer-of-the-line. Like mothers the world over, you labored simultaneously on multiple fronts, clocking in at work while still managing a family. (Sick child/flat tire/dirty grout/empty fridge.) Thank you for being conflicted. Thank you for how godawful you looked certain mornings. For your occasional deranged soliloquies of resentment. Honestly, they made me love you more. Thank you also for playing make

I ran with a wail stuck in my throat. It was ridiculous, it was all ridiculous. Not just him, not just this - all of it - life - to be afflicted with the endless urge to survive. It turns out, there's almost nothing you can do to stop trying.

Darkness doesn’t really fall. It rises. Shadows fill the woods first. The pale sky darkens last.

It may be dangerous to be unfathered, exposed on the animal plain, but life unmothered is simply unlivable. I mean, why go on?

I’ve heard it said that the sorrow of human life is that it ends. But I don’t think that’s the source of our sorrow. Everything ends, not just human lives. Days end. Species disappear. Planets die. No, the real sorrow of human life is that we feel. That’s our affliction.

I wanted to tell all my people, my Bronx people, “You gotta come see this! These woods are ours too. These woods are everybody’s.

It’s been a while since I’ve made it to church, but in my heart, I’m still faithful. Because of this, I do not believe in such things as “unforgivable mistakes.” God knows you are a broken sinner and loves you anyway.

I have more thanks to give than there are hours on earth

Does it bother you that I never wanted children of my own? Maybe in private moments you think it speaks poorly of you or of your mothering. But the opposite is true. My choice reflects my awe of mothers. After all, as an anxious child, I understood the masochistic level of exposure a mother takes on the moment her child is born, how agonizing her position. Your response to life’s chaos was to over-function. You were a taskmaster, a list maker, a toer-of-the-line. Like mothers the world over, you labored simultaneously on multiple fronts, clocking in at work while still managing a family. (Sick child/flat tire/dirty grout/empty fridge.) Thank you for being conflicted. Thank you for how godawful you looked certain mornings. For your occasional deranged soliloquies of resentment. Honestly, they made me love you more.

It’s the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She’s the one you’ve got to bury. She’s a mirage. She’ll only break your heart.

You go to the trail for the mountaintops. You go to get away from people. But it’s funny. The people end up being what you remember the most.

PAINsylvania. The state motto should be “Why, God, why?

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. —Louise Glück, “October

Sometimes, in your lap, I would press my hand against your chest so that I could feel the center of you—your heartwood, your innermost substance, like the core of a tree that keeps it standing.

woods. The world and its people are too much for me. I am crushed between empathy and impotence. I don’t think I’m important. Not at all! In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial. Then why was I given this heart? It is so much more than I need.

That real mother, the mother that you get, you’ve got to love her, there’s no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission.

Gotham. Full of hustlers. Bright as a galaxy. My home.

They don’t want fat people to hike, but they also don’t want poor people to hike.

Where an angel builds a church, the devil builds a chapel.

How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

Here's an idea: All emotions start out as love. Later that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot.