“On the beach, at dawn:
four small stones clearly
hugging each other.

How many kinds of love
might there be in the world,
and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever
to imagine I could know
such a marvelous business?”

— Mary Oliver, On the Beach

“I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by… Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back… We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.”

— Danusha Laméris