I never learned to count my blessings

Young bright and bold,
with a bottle for a friend
and a heart full of holes

baby, you’re a lost cause.

In the first century CE, roman authorities punished St. Appolonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After awhile, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.

You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.

how does it feel
to be one of the beautiful people?

It’s been my whole life — loss — the sensation of things slipping away.

Life is just an endless banquet of loss, and each time a new loss is doled out, you have to move your mental furniture around, throw things out, and by then there’s more loss, and the cycle goes on and on.

Either love me or leave me alone.

You don’t call
I don’t blame you
I don’t even trust me
I want to love you, but I don’t know how

What I hope for is a country that sees women as whole human beings whose morality is related to their compassion, kindness and ethics - not whether or not they have sex. I think there’s a common misconception about my book/work on this issue that I have some problem with virgins or being abstinent until marriage. I don’t have a problem at all - in fact, I don’t care. It’s none of my business; and it’s certainly not the business of schools, government, medical establishments, etc. I want you to be able to make the choice not to have sex free of shame and fear in the same way I want that for those who do have sex. I don’t think it’s a ton to ask.

On the “precious gift” front. The gift that you give to your spouse should you chose to marry (assuming you’re allowed to) is your love and partnership. The longer young women are taught to think of their sexuality as “gifts” - something that’s separate from them that’s to be given away or lost or opened or whatever the latest terminology is - the longer we’re going to be seen as less than full human beings.