Night Vision

The girl fits her body in
to the space between the bed
and the wall. she is a stalk,
exhausted. she will do some
thing with this. she will
surround these bones with flesh,
she will cultivate night vision.
she will train her tongue
to lie still in her mouth and listen.
the girl slips into sleep.
her dream is red and raging.
she will remember
to build something human with it.

Lucille Clifton

One for the girls –

Oh, if only!!

Waiting

I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for.

Martha Gellhorn
Letter to Hortense Flexner and Wyncie King
[Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn]

Rain

A wet day. And I am glad of the rain, because I have talked too much.

Virginia Woolf
diary entry May 1929