Maybe in order to understand sex fully/one has to risk being destroyed by it.
Interpretation
Understanding sex deeply requires embracing its complexities, even at the risk of emotional turmoil.
This quote by Sharon Olds suggests that to truly grasp the nature of sexual relationships, one must be willing to confront the potential challenges and dangers that may come with them. Engaging deeply with such an intimate aspect of life can lead to profound experiences, but it also comes with the risk of emotional vulnerability and potential hurt.
In practice
In a discussion about the complexities of adult relationships.
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.
... sometimes I can feel it, the way we are pouring slowly toward a curve and around it through something dark and soft, and we are bound to each other.
The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.
Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.
There's always a price you pay when you lie. Once you introduce a lie into a relationship, even for the best of intentions, it is always there. Whenever youβre with that person again, that lie is in the room too. It sits on your shoulder. Good lie or bad lie, it's in the room with you forever now. It's your constant companion.
Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.
I thought talking to human beings was just something that could make things complicated and unpleasant. So I didn't talk much. I just watched people.
Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.
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