Everyone Loves a Boston Girl

While helping a close friend with an English paper a few weeks ago, I came across this quote, “Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands” It was added to the introduction of The Glass Menagerie. I had noo idea what this meant but it sounded so intriguing that I really wanted to find out. We spent a little time discussing it and what we thought it was saying. I looked it up and saw it was from an ee cummings poem:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Wow. I love this poem. I read it over a few times and realized, while it could mean so many different things to so many different people, it was exactly how I felt about the person I was with at the time.
I read one person’s account of their wedding day. They had their wedding bands inscribed on the inside. His says, “Nobody, not even the rain,” and hers, “has such small hands.” I read this aloud.
“Are you crying?” he asked me. No, of course not. I wasn’t, but I felt close. Words do that to me sometimes.
I always forget how amazing poetry is and I never seem to have the patience for it. But then I read something like this and I realize how beautiful words can be and how much they can impact my life.