One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pie Girl
“I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that’s all they do.
They don’t pull away. They don’t look at your face. They don’t try to kiss you.
All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness to it.”
—Jenna Hunterson, Waitress
Next to Love
Cold Solstice
At cold solstice I cut
the night, take its long waist
to my quilted bed,
curl up the dark under
broideries of spring, to wait
a night spread out again for you.
—Hwang Jini, At Cold Solstice
Christmastime is Here
“I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It’s not bad at all, really.
Maybe it just needs a little love.”
—Linus, A Charlie Brown Christmas
Happy Little
The Tiger and the Persimmon
“Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.”
—Shakespeare
The Great Pumpkin
“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to.
I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy.
Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”
—Linus, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Bake the Vote
The vote is precious. It is almost sacred.
It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy.
We must use it.
Sen. John Lewis
Quarter Century
What they don’t understand about birthdays and what
they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten,
and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and
three, and two, and one…
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion
or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden
dolls that fit one inside the other,
each year inside the next
one.
—Sandra Cisneros
