Someone once asked me, is possible to love something without knowing it? I was 23 then and changing my mind about a lot of things.
When I think now about what it has meant to love Danielle for many years, itβs this: the unwavering curiosity, the long conversation. The way we know each other βElbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.β1 and still. All I want to do today is to go to breakfast together and find out more.
What is more romantic than listening? open, and willing to know the whole story?
πps. today is the last day for the valentineβs day sale ~ take 15% off love-themed art with the code LOVEART
New Prints - the shop has been updated π
The Whistler
by Mary Oliver
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you whistling? Yes, she said, I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.
I know her so well, I think, I thought. Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this Iβve been living with for thirty years?
This clear, dark, lovely whistler?
Danielle gave me Our World when we were first together, which is about Mary Oliverβs life with her partner Molly Malone Cook. This poem is included toward the end of the book.