Out there somewhere there is a love who will never dream of calling you too much. Who speaks, like you, in poetry and candlewax and stardust. Who runs outside on stormy nights to howl at the moon. Who collects bones and sings incantation and talks to the ancestors. And that lover, when you find him or her, will see you and know you – just as you are and just as you should be.And they will say yes. Yes, you. I will go there with you. I have been waiting for this.

If you feel like this time you won’t survive the pain, remember that you will. You may not like it. There may be times when you don’t even want to, but survive you will. And thrive. And love again. This I know to be true.

A circle of women may just be the most powerful force known to humanity. If you have one, embrace it. If you need one, seek it. If you find one, for the love of all that is good and holy, dive in. Hold on. Love it up. Get Naked. Let them see you. Let them hold you. Let your reluctant tears fall. Let yourself rise fierce and love gentle. You will be changed. The very fabric of your being will be altered by this, if you allow it. Please, please allow it.

We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again.

I wonder now, is there is a word for strength leaving your body? Or love?What of its arrival?Or is it only pain that the body names, and then only in it’s leaving?It is true, I know, that there are some things for which there are no words.Only the spaces between the words we know to say all that must be saidAnd I think about how some calls come deep, for years and years before I finally answer.I wonder why this is so. And I wonder what this tells you about me.

If you’re going to love a poet you should know this. Our words are our truths. Our blood hums with verse. We break easily. Our words save us. Our stanzas keep us alive. If we loved you at all, we loved you truly. And you will never leave us but live under our skin and beneath the tips of our fingers and in the ink spill on blank page.Because poetry, like some love, is forever.

Never get too attached to the first draft of anything – this includes writing, art, homes, love. You will revise and revise and revise. We are always in the midst of our own becoming.