Dear Janus:

You are welcome and hugs back to you! This Sunday morning, before I knew that you posted  last night and this morning, I read about the mass shooting of last night in a Colorado lgbtq club- believed to be a hate attack. Five people died and at least 12 or 18 were injured. I was saddened, and I thought about you.

In your first post you talked about Lenny from Of Mice and Men. He liked soft things like mice and the woman’s hair, but he unintentionally killed mice and he killed the woman. It makes me think of so many parents hurting soft things: their own children… unintentionally and intentionally. We humans should think of each other (children and adults) as soft things and treat each other gently.

I loved so much of your poem in your 2nd post, an excellent poem, written so well. You are truly gifted. There is just one thing that takes away from the excellence of your poems (I noticed this in past poems as well and I told you about it a long time ago), and that is that from one point on, within the poem, you repeat yourself, becoming verbose (this is my tendency too, in my writings). I am mentioning this because I don’t want the repetition and verbosity to take away from the great quality of your poems otherwise, particularly in regard to this poem which I think is the best you’ve ever written! (Maybe I think this about every one of your poems).

“All my life, I was told to be strong and hold things together, But I didn’t realize that feelings were fragile like a feather, Beginning to fray at the seams and lost in broken hopes and dreams“- so very well written, so much talent here. Feelings being fragile like a feather makes me think of the softness of mice and men (in the movie), and how indeed we should treat each other gently because our feelings are so soft, so vulnerable to hurt and injury.

“people said ‘real men don’t cry‘”- real men and real women don’t say that. We all have to free ourselves, and others with whom we interact, from this harmful binary gender message.

“Let yourself cry and listen to your heart, And reach out whenever you feel like you’re falling apart, Because people care“- I feel that this sentence, read by people in trouble, at just at the right time…  can literally save lives!

anita