Poetry is a form of self-expression that heightens and beautifies the intensity of emotion a person feels. Anyone can write poetry, as long as they have inspiration. Writer, teacher, and poet Joseph Fasano (@Joseph_Fasano_), penned a book of poetry prompts to initiate people into writing poems. Recently, he posted a tweet with the screengrab of an email he received. The email contains a poem a man wrote to his late wife, inspired by a prompt in Fasano’s book. Thousands of people are expressing awe at the beautiful emotion captured in his words.
Representative Image Source: Unsplash | Esther Wechsler
A person had emailed him a poem that their dad wrote after getting inspired by “The Magic Words,” Fasano’s book of poetry prompts. In the email, the person wrote that their dad “has never written anything ‘creative’ in his life.” They revealed that their mom, who worked as a librarian, passed away recently. So, they gave their dad a copy of Fasano’s book, after reading which, he penned a poem dedicated to his late wife.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Tima Miroshnichenko
The heart-wrenching poem read:
“I miss your smell of honey
I miss your voice like good rivers
I miss your hands like all the books
I never got to open
But I know that living means opening
And I want to live, I want to open
And you, love, I want you to be there
In every story
Go, be in every story.”
Fasano expressed his love for the heartfelt poem in the caption of the post, writing, “Still the greatest email ever. Humans for the win.” @meteroid404 commented on the poem saying they loved it, “It goes to show that poetry is not exclusive to poets. It is the sincerity of the feeling that gives magic to the words.” Fasano also wrote a comment saying, “I love the grace of letting go, which is love.”
Also, in the comment section, Katniss Evergreen (@mind_fullvsful) wrote that they, too, used the same prompt from Fasano's book, to write a poem after their mom passed away. Their poem read:
“I miss your chatter in the evenings
I miss your voice like rays of sunshine
I miss your presence like sweet
Songbirds chirping at dawn
But I know living means blossoming
And I want to live, I want to grow
And you, I want you to be the peaceful
Breeze playing in the garden
I love you, mom
Peaceful breeze playing in the garden.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Suzy Hazelwood
Fasano wrote in his book’s introduction that he was first inspired to write this prompt book after he was invited to speak with a class of second graders at an event in New Jersey. He was supposed to teach them about the craft and magic of poetry. “I developed a prompt that could help these young people unlock the images, thoughts, and feelings inside them, without asking them to worry about how to structure a poem.” The results, he said, were astonishing. Seven-and-eight-year-olds were churning beautiful poems from their imaginations and their everyday lives.
Representative Image Source: Unsplash | Trust Tru Katsande
He started sharing some of the poems from these kids on his social media. Thousands of people reached out to him saying that they were using these prompts to overcome their struggles with language, self-expression, verbal communication, and overwhelming feelings. As he curated these prompts into a full-fledged book, the book got out and currently, is known as a wonderful resource to unlock the deepest emotions for people who would never call themselves “poets.”
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.