Solitude

Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that,
and living alone won't either,
for solitude will also break
you with its yearning.
You have to love.
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.
And when it happens
that you are broken,
or betrayed,
or left,
or hurt,
or death brushes near,
let yourself sit by an apple tree
and listen to the
apples falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself you tasted
as many as you could.

~Louise Erdrich,
The Painted Drum LP