Oh no: we never mention her! Her name is never heard;
My lips are now forbid to speak That once familiar word.

You'll never know the hurt I suffer, nor the pain I rise above, and I'll never know the same about you...

Although many pairs of lips spoke her name, none ever brought its reality to her.

You will never learn what I am thinking. And those who boast most loudly that they know my thought, to such people I lie even more.

You'll never know that you had all of me. You'll never know the poetry you've stirred in me. Of all the stars I've seen that shine so brightly, I've never known or felt in myself so rightly, It's in me...

Never again I would know her slow kisses which are hardly felt. Never again the ringing mourning bells, songs of the dead that we loved.

Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?

On the frontiers of the self: "What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I."

I’ll never find out now
What A. thought of me.
If B. ever forgave me in the end.
Why C. pretended everything was fine.
What part D. played in E.’s silence.
What F. had been expecting, if anything.
Why G. forgot when she knew perfectly well.
What H. had to hide.
What I. wanted to add.
If my being around
meant anything
to J. and K. and the rest of the alphabet.

I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again!

I can’t tell you just how wonderful she is. I don’t want you to know. I don’t want any one to know.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Looking at these photographs, I know that I will never understand the world I live in or fully know the places I've been. I've learned for sure only what I don't know - and how much I have to learn.