The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me.

Show him every dawn & read to him endlessly.

I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.

He was his own leftover, the spat-out scrag. He was what his brain could make nothing of.

...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.

And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.