Carried Through the Night

That smile.
That laugh.
That smirk,
and that snicker.

The sarcasm.
The late night talks.
The bullies,
and the high school hallways.

Through tears.
Through joy.
Through sadness,
and through hardship.

You were there, to hold me through the storm.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the lvoe letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

(Derek Walcott)

An Exerpt from House Rules (Jodi Picoult)

"Don't you wish love was so strong it could come back to haunt you?"
I told him the story of my mother, who one night had woken up at 3:14 a.m. with a mouth full of violet petals and the scent of roses so thick in the air that she could not breathe. An hour later she was roused by a phone call: her own mother, a florist by trade, had died of a heart attack at 3:14 a.m. "Science can't answer everything," I told Henry. "It doesn't explain love."
"Actually it does," he told me. "There have been all kinds of studies done. People are more attracted to people with symmetrical features, for example. And symmetrical men smell better to women. Also, people who have similar genetic traits are attracted to each other. It probably has something to do with evolution."
I burst out laughing. "That is awful," I said. "That is the most unromantic thing I've ever heard."
"I don't think so . . ."
"Oh, really. Say something that will sweep me off my feet," I demanded.
Henry looked at me for a long moment, until I could feel my head growing lighter and dizzier. "I think you might be perfectly symmetrical," he said.

Bigger than dreams.