Monique Allison

“I hate small talk with a passionate hatred. Why? I suppose because any meeting with another human being is collision for me now.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, may years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end off the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gather into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song;
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop in the sun.”
― May Sarton

“You are too sensitive", says the emotionally immature ignorant without empathy.”
― Robin Sacredfire

“For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest conversation.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude