( s p a c e

t o

b r e a t h e )
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I've been memorizing this poem:

since feeling is first
by e. e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you

wholly to be a fool
while spring is in the world

my blood approves
and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom.
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry--
the best gesture of my brain is less
than your eyelids flutter which says

we are for each other. then
laugh, and lean back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

I was reminded of it recently, reminded how much I love this poem, and decided to memorize it. I say it every night before I go to bed, like a prayer, and I say it every time I happen to think of it. I think it is as well as a prayer. There is one other poem I treated this way, because it is obviously suited for bedtime:

AA BB CC (or, Unintentional Rhyming, aka Also Applies to Rainbows)
by Scout Thompson

how many a stolen sunrise
in your eyes before you die?

nestle in your sheets
as they beckon you to sleep

at five am it seems so plenty
as if the infinite were merely twenty.

11:52 a.m. 2003-11-30�

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