If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold.
Anne MichaelsHistory and memory share events; that is, they share time and space. Every moment is two moments.
Anne MichaelsWhen my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.
Anne MichaelsBut sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.
Anne MichaelsThe spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and lightโฆ.Itโs a mistake to think itโs the small things we control and not the large, itโs the other way around! We canโt stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident โ or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.
Anne Michaels