what belongs to you

 from what belongs to you by garth greenwell

"he never chatted with one woman, she went on, he was always chatting with several of them at once. he was polite sometimes, sweet, but he could be rude, too, he was rough with some of them, it was like he was a different person with each one. it was like that for me, too, i thought as i listened to her, it's one of the things i crave in the sites i use, that i can carry on these multiple conversations, each its own window so that sometimes my screen is filled with them; and in each i have the sense of being entirely false and entirely true, like a self in a story, i suppose, or the self i inhabit when i teach, the self of authority and example. i know they're all i have, these partial selves, true and false at once, that any ideal of wholeness i long for is a sham; but i do long for it, i think i glimpse it sometimes, i even imagine i've felt it."

"making poems was a way of loving things, i had always thought, i had always thought, of preserving them, of living moments twice; or more than that, it was a way of living more fully, of bestowing on experience a richer meaning."

"love isn't just a matter of looking at someone, ,i think now, but also of looking with them, of facing what they face"