Ashleigh Reads Books Reading is my first love, writing my second. Here I combine the two.

“Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.”

“

no one who knows what friendship is
chooses and picks the virtuous;
we love where we must love; so when
we showed ourselves without disguise
friendship itself had chosen us.
I could have hidden from you then

all you reproach me with. You suffer
that knowledge as I suffer still
the self that made my tongue my own
to speak the love I still must offer
whether you wish me well or ill.
You drop me. I walk on alone.

”