Dear e. e. cummings,

There's this poem you wrote:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                    i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant 
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I think if somebody told me I could save one poem out of all the poetry I've ever read, and the rest would be vaporized, this is the poem I would save. "This is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart." That line just catches me. Have you seen the stars?

But the other thing that catches me is the question of where people begin and end. After someone dies, it's common to hear that they live on in the lives they've touched and the hearts of their loved ones. But why does that only begin to happen when they die? And why do we assume that the venn diagram of two people looks like two untouching circles? And if I read something you wrote, and your thoughts are running through my head, and then they stay there, do they keep being your thoughts? And what if I start to really believe in them? Do they start to become mine?

And what about our experiences? Does the memory of a shared experience belong equally to all involved? Even if it was a trivial encounter to one person but was lifechanging to the other? What if one person forgets? Does it belong only to the one who remembers? Or does the experience belong wholly and completely to each person, regardless of others involved?

And what about the experiences we forget? Do our pasts really belong to us? Does mine belong to me? Can I only claim the bits I remember? What kind of ownership is it if I have no clue what it is I'm owning? Do I even want to own my entire past? And if I don't, how in hell do I get rid of part of it? Up and disown it? Do I have a right to my past, or a responsibility to it, or both, or neither, and can you have one without the other? And how does ownership of something like a memory or a past or a thought or an experience manifest itself? Does it have any practical manifestation? Is the idea of possession even a good model to begin with?

And what are people made of? And can you give yourself away? And if you do, do you stop having yourself? And can you give part of yourself away? Invest it? How do you cash in that investment? If you give part of yourself away, are you less yourself? Is there, then, less of yourself?

I don't know. But the all of the questions lead me to suspect that the model of one person owning all of themselves and nothing more is wrong.

Sincerely,
Claire