One. Making tea in the dark is good for the soul.
Here you are evaporating the accumulated germs inside you with boiling water.
Darkness absorbs heat and now everything is
Scorching.
Do not even add sugar.
Pure green tea is the sauna of Nirvana.

Two. The flowers in your room will ward off all burglars, rapists, and axe murderers.
Listen up all you fleeting shadows!
All you demons! All you alien invaders from a planet with no sun!
Tell all the Draculas and Bloody Mary's and famished living dead of the world:
Evaporate!
Flee away!
For I have the power
Of Publix-bought sunflowers.

Three. The girl who always ate apple seeds for lunch now has a garden of apple blossoms
Blooming from her fertile pink stomach,
Curling around the Venetian column of her spine,
Crisply breathing petals from inside her young lungs,
Growing their lush leaves in her heart.
And all the kids who hurt her will look at this forest she has made for herself,
And everyone will see how gorgeous she is,
And they will feel ashamed.
And maybe she will let you fall in love with her again.

Four. The drafty windows, leaky faucet, and noisy air conditioner are all simply signs that your house has a soul.
Leave the useless light switches be, do not fix the faulty washing machine.
One day when you are old and grey, you will look at the creaky stairs and smile.
And you will remember your mother's voice,
And you will remember your old dog Rufus,
And the house will reminiscence with you,
Because she's been through those things too.

Five. Witches born in March will marry muggles.
Beautiful muggles.
Twitchy, wild-eyed muggles with jerky knees and steady hands.
Muggles who hold your wand as if holding a cheap firewowrk,
But how they hold you.
As if your body were the warmest blanket in a blizzard.
Muggles whom you would put the Christmas tree up by hand for.
Muggles who you laugh and cry with, hopelessly shaking your booze-dazed head,
Because we are all muggles in the end, really,
So what's the use in pretending?

Six. In this universe there is a planet of trees.
And each tree is a word used by people's lips, or written down in ink.
And each time that word is spoken, or written, a new branch stretches from the tree of that word.
It would be unimaginably vast, this jungle of words.
Think about it.
A planet fueled by the chatter on our lonely little earth.
Like a universe we helped to grow from light years and light years away,
No tree idle for a nanosecond.
A never-ending forest.

Seven. The tree of the word "love" has more branches than the tree of the word "hate."
And there will always be more green tea leaves left to brew,
And there will always be more apples left to pick,
And books left to read and rain left to sleep to.
And maybe, just maybe,
There is a scientist out there who can prove all our little superstitions true,
And then we can invade the church
And have a barbecue
And lay out every blanket on the grass so that the field looks like a checkered quilt
From a million miles away.