Health is more than not being sick. It is well-being: in body, mind, and
community. People live best in healthy surroundings, in a place where they can
trust each other, work together to meet daily needs, share in times of difficulty and
plenty, and help each other learn and grow and live, each as fully as he or she can.

Where there is no doctor

She felt guiltily grateful that she had a blue American passport in her bag. It shielded her from choicelessness. She could always leave, she did not have to stay.

Was it a quality inherent in women, or did they just learn to shield their personal regrets, to suspend their lives, subsume themselves in childcare?

Americanah, my new favourite book. It brought me to tears on numerous occasions, not sure if that says more about me than the book.

this was love, to be eager for tomorrow.

Americanah

There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall,and so it always was,
on one hand Venus,on the other Mars;
fall,and are one,just as this earth is one
island in archipelagoes of stars.
My first friend was the sea.Now,is my last.
I stop talking now.I work,then I read,
cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work,I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me,and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door,and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea. 

Derek Walcott

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 love letters from the bookshelf,

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

Derek Walcott

I like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh … And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

Not all those that wander are lost.

Open Book

Time was, your hands were on me night and day. 
(The thrill along my spine!) Of course I flipped 
for you, from A to Z and back to A, 
not once suspecting our romantic script 
was doomed (and how), you fickle, shallow fool. 
You've traded everything you shared with me—
defining moments, leisurely, old school— 
for quickies with your laptop, your PC, 
your iPad, iPhone, iDon't-Give-a-Damn: 
amid their breathless litany of news, 
blogs, tweets, directions, recipes and spam, 
they will, at any moment that you choose, 
look up a word (or dozens!) in a flash. 
Well, here's a definition I find merry: 
Comeuppance (noun): when all your gadgets crash, 
and you crawl back to me—your dictionary.

You make me want to find the courage to be the person I hope to be. Then you'd be closer to having someone in your life who is worthy of you. And I think that courage is needed to write our hopeful story, a story that should - and can - inspire others to live beautiful lives filled with love and grace.

The Rain

What is going to happen
Is that it's going to rain

Rain my love
A poem not about sex

But love
The true kind

You talk of things
To myself and others

You think of things
Her long tanned arms

You will realize you love me
But it will be too late

You will cry out for me
I will be long gone

This is not a wish
But what I knew to be so

This is what I knew to be so
Under the pouring sun

This is what I knew to be so
Under the pouring sea

Where they will find us
You and me

“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.” 

― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

atonement  

Amends or reparation made for an injury or wrong; expiation

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress."

Malcolm X