they’re living the dream

𝖼𝖺𝗍𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖿𝗂𝖽𝖽𝗅𝖾𝗌 <3

Salvador Dali cutlery set (1957)

“I know where you are with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other, we are bound to each other with huge invisible threads …”

— Sharon Olds, from “True Love” (in Strike Sparks)

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk / down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs / to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” / when someone sneezes, a leftover / from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. / And sometimes, when you spill lemons / from your grocery bag, someone else will help you/ pick them up. 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. For the waitress / to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, / and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. / We have so little of each other, now. So far / from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. / What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these / fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, / have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

— Small Kindnesses, Danusha Laméris

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