and nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be..

All the different kinds of love

Miss Godwin bit her lower lip, then, with conscious effort, smiled. " Do you remember last year, Alice, when we went to the zoo and i explained about all the different kinds of love in the world? How the mother bear will cuff her children about to show the way she loves them, how the eagle's children never see their mother at all, because she's always hunting for their food and is only home at mealtimes -"

"Like Daddy," Alice interjected, smiling.

"Some love is very loud and noisy like a cage of monkeys, and other love hides away like a crab in the sand, afraid to show itself. We can never just walk up to somebody and say - love me the way i want to be loved. We have to wait for them to do it in their own way at their own time."

Alice sighed. " I suppose so..."


Thom Demijohn

Black Alice


You lose your love for her
and then it is her that is lost,
And then it is both who are lost,
and nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.

In a very ordinary world
a most extrordinary pain mingles with the small routines,
The loss seems huge and yet
Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.

You are afraid,
If you found the perfect love
it would scald your hands,
Rip the skin from your nerves,
Cause havoc with a computed heart.

You lose your love for her and then it is she who is lost.
You tried not to hurt her and yet
Everything you touched became a wound.
You tried to mend what cannot be mended,
You tried, neither foolishly nor clumsy,
to rescue what cannot be rescued.

You failed,
and now she is elsewhere
and her night and your night
Are both utterly drained.


Brian Patten
Love Poems


The Second Tuesday We Talk About Feeling Sorry For Yourself
pg 61
"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people to trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."

Tuesdays with Morrie