- It’s hard to tell
- When you’re a child or in love, you
don’t know
- or care—until love becomes habit and it
hurts—
- where your problems end
- and another’s begin.
- Why did I ever stay
- with one who didn’t like me?
- Did I feel that I didn’t deserve to be as I am?
- Limitation, limitation?
- Fear of difficulty,
- fear of the unknown?
- Jesus said to love your neighbor
- as yourself,
- and he didn’t say how to love yourself.
- A child persists in devotion
- to a hurtful parent,
- unable to replace a parent’s love.
- It’s hard to tell
- whether you give for yourself
- or for yourself only because you’re afraid
- to displease the other.
- It’s easy enough to say
- that she can’t help herself;
- it hurts her more than it hurts me.
- It’s easy enough to say
- that I’m oversensitive; he’s not mean.
- It’s hard to be natural;
- to sort out one from two
- is even harder. What?
- Should you let it fall, feel as you feel?
- Happiness is as interconvoluted as unhappiness,
- but it’s not painful when you move.
- Steadily, steadily, coil and uncoil.
- 14 May 1985, Palo Alto