a headstrong mama.

• Frank O’Hara, “Steps”

• “It’s pouring, the trees are getting greener before my eyes, I love you. I’m almost afraid of the intensity of this happiness.”

“You and I are so special; the miracles we know, no one knows, and no one loves the way we love.”

“The thought that you exist is so divinely blissful in itself that it is ridiculous to talk about the everyday sadness of separation—a week’s, ten days’—what does it matter? since my whole life belongs to you.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, from letters to his wife Vera

• Raymond Carver, “The Gift” / “Best Time of Day”

• “I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”

— Franz Kafka, from The Castle

• Yanyi, “Aubade”

• “You and I have almost achieved that which is never achieved: we sit in each other’s souls.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millais

• Richard Siken, from “Snow and Dirty Rain”

• “I am sitting at my kitchen table waiting for my lover to arrive with lettuce and tomatoes and rum and sherry wine and a big floury loaf of bread in the fading sunlight. Coffee is percolating gently, and my mood is mellow. I have been very happy lately, just wallowing in it selfishly, knowing it will not last very long, which is all the more reason to enjoy it now.”

— Tennessee Williams, from a personal letter

• June Jordan, Poems for Haruko / “West Coast Episode”

• ““I’m going,” he tells Jude, but then he doesn’t move. A dragonfly, as shiny as a scarab, hums above them. “I’m going,” he repeats, but he still doesn’t move, and it is only the third time he says it that he’s finally able to stand up from the lounge chair, drunk on the hot air, and shove his feet back into his loafers.

“Limes,” says Jude, looking up at him and shielding his eyes against the sun.

“Right,” he says, and bends down, takes Jude’s sunglasses off him, kisses him on his eyelids, and replaces his glasses.”

— Hanya Yanagihara, from A Little Life

• W.S. Merwin, “In Time” / “Wish”

• “I thought she was sleeping until I heard her call out from across the room, “Will you bring me a glass of water?” I did. Then in her always-sleepy tone and drawl she said, “Do you remember when you were a little girl and you would ask your mama to bring you a glass of water?” Yeah. “You know how half the time you weren’t even thirsty. You just wanted that hand that was attached to that glass that was attached to that person you just wanted to stay there until you fell asleep.” She took the glass of water that I brought her and just sat it down full on the table next to her. Wow, I thought. What am I gonna do with love like this.”