Bonsai of Thought: Seventy-Three

1. If you cannot bear my worst,
don't hope to receive my best.

2. By fortune's whim...
one who lacks even the merit to be a servant becomes a queen,
while she who was born to be queen becomes the servant.

3. More than your love for me,
my peace—for my own sake—is far more urgent.

4. The two most distant points on this earth are:
where you are now,
and
where you thought you would be.

5. Within sorrow itself
try to discover love.

Once you find it
you will never again
need to look toward anyone's face.

6. If I tell you,
'Do not forget me,'
then this very saying
has no worth today.

You forgot me long ago,
when we were both together.

7. - Where will you go traveling?
- To the chambers of my own heart.

8. Do just two things and you will win:
stay true to your own path.
Hate no one.

9. If the world kicks you,
move yourself to another place.

10. More than a good friend
you need a true friend.

From the outside
so many seem good!

11. We two...
are we only of this moment?
Or for a lifetime?

12. Where no one can understand you,
there, even if late,
it is good to find someone
who can understand you.

To have such a person, anything can be given up.

13. Come, let us live like kaleidoscopes.
Let us arrange the broken pieces within ourselves
into patterns...

14. Ah, that last time we met,
if only I had held you
a little tighter!

15. From childhood itself...
I was not as others were.
What others saw,
I did not see.

16. I know you have many qualifications.
You should know—none of them will serve me.
Now, if you wish, we can begin to speak.

17. I am one of your people.
But I am not like you.

18. Being with the wrong person
makes everything in life seem wrong—
decisions, actions, feelings, conversations, conduct... everything!

19. You kept becoming poetry again and again,
and I suffered.
So it was I who committed suicide, not the poet.

20. I can never understand
which causes more pain:
the lies I believed?
Or the truths I did not believe?