Sticks and Stones

Some say it like a charm
in the face of words heavy as stone,
or a riddle of subtle pebbles thrown,
each sticking point like a firearm.
As if the saying would erase the harm.
Raging fire or cold as ice, we’ve known
too well where words can send us.
Words can cut us to the bone
and even end us.

—Diane Thiel

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Tunnel Vision

Philip Jenkins

Alice Roberts is a familiar face in British media. A skilled archaeologist, she has for years hosted…

The German Bishops’ Conference, Over the Cliff

George Weigel

When it was first published in 1993, Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical on the reform of…

In Praise of Translation

Erik Varden

The circumstances of my life have been such that I have moved, since adolescence, in a ­borderland…