“Cider and candor and cranberry kisses, firelight dancing – lowered inhibitions, our eyes caught up in intimate moments, soaking in these cinnamon-spiced secrets.”

When rules don’t make sense, ask questions, break barriers, rise above it all.

You break everything you touch. Why was I surprised when you broke me too?

Lavender lullabies whispered into night skies, remnants of galaxies cradled closely, as you sleep sweetly, time slips away and so do I.

When winter withers – my bones begin to thaw, my lungs crackle as they expand, and the blood in my veins start to flow and I awaken from hibernation – hungry for happiness and eager to let go.

My mind is not my own. I don’t recognize her when I am alone.

I know I haven’t told you, but I also know, that you’ve felt my love.

I lace barbed wire around my heart, constrict it – pull tight, maybe the pain will make it feel alive, and I can pretend it didn’t already die.

Expanding like the universe, I discovered galaxies within. To break glass ceilings: Breath in trust, exhale doubt-beckon bravery.

Those closest to me. Didn’t know the true state of my mentality.

Time aches- my words break as if they’re the wings of a captured butterfly as if they’re the seconds that keep ticking by as if they’re embers that refuse to ignite.

Misty morning welcomes me as I wander through the trees – calm amidst the chaos of distant memories.

Lost journals are steps back home, like the mending of broken bones, like scars that act as patches to my soul, like the measurement marks on my mother’s wall that show just how much I’ve grown.

Fireside and free, tangled up in curiosity, dripping in holy honesty, drawing in pure ecstasy, exploring possibilities – a cabin in the woods.

I simply cannot hold onto hope, it aches like possibilities never reached, I’m bubbling over with grief – this chaos has caused so much loss and fatigue.

And the world seems just a little bit warmer, and the sun shines slightly brighter than it used to, and the days pass differently than before, and time is no longer stuck in a loop.

I learned all about love from people that didn’t know how to love me.

We come in. We don’t know anybody or very few people that we work with, but the nature of the job pulls us into a sort of an intimate kind of relationship and communication and then they’re gone and it’s kind of melancholy.

My faith isn’t very churchy, it’s a pretty personal, intimate thing and has been a huge source of strength in moments of life and death.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

It is the mark of a great poet to write words that feel as though they have stood witness to your most intimate memory of love.

Yes, I think it is entirely possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met. Physicality is an expression of intimacy- not an indication of it.

I consider abortion to be a deeply personal and intimate issue for women and I don’t believe male legislators should even vote on the issue.

I thought I had learned how to have an intimate relationship. And I thought I’d learned how to be happy. Everybody has issues. For me, the challenge is intimacy, but I really didn’t start to get that until I turned 60.