you don’t burn and there are no tornadoes in your chest, your hands don’t hold galaxies or stars and your anger isn’t a volcanic god ready to smite every enemy. the moon doesn’t love you and neither do the stars, but the earth does, in its own way, i guess.
see, you are human, my dear, born to destroy and to take and to make, born to learn and to watch. you observe the stars; they do not observe you.
you run from tornadoes or you chase them, you do not become them. your anger is just anger an emotion to control or be controlled by; volcanoes can stay dormant for years but you are never still.
and why would the moon love you? why would the stars? they are too far away to be swayed by a pretty face, but the earth lives under your feet, it feels you dance to the beat it drums out in thunder and rain.
you are human, fragile and while your skin is weak your heart beats strong. it might not hold hurricanes but it does hold love, and this can be just as deadly. your anger won’t ever level cities but it can topple friendships and they amount to the same thing.
the poets were wrong. you are not out of this world, you are of it and beloved to it, and you are still special.
A worker at the Roure perfume plant in Grasse, France, scoops up the morning’s rose harvest at the end of May. These rose petals will be processed immediately into an absolute, the aromatic liquid which is the basic component of perfume; photographed by Michael Freeman