After Walt Whitman and a certain engineer

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels,
I myself become the wounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
-- Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass leaf 33 "I understand the large hearts of heroes,"
half way down

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When I listened to you say that I thought again how much I dislike phones, because people can't write those kinds of things to you in plain words... they'd realise how ridiculous it all sounds. Write me about the magpie that got kicked out of the nest because it was a runt. Write me about the hardship of the world where some must die that others may thrive. Write the sound of the last chirp before the crows came and how that's just the way that it is and then I'll continue our phone conversation, even though, really, that's beneath you. You were never a runt and you were never kicked out of a nest. You're one of the strong ones... look out for the rest.

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p.s.

If you were a sculptor
and kept polishing
the same stone
for long enough
it would become
nothing.