This one once reduced a room of difficult seventeen-year-olds to tears that could not be stopped for several minutes. Five years later, Philip Levine would hold a door open for myself and another one of the former teenagers, and we would both fail to thank him quite how we wanted to.

Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,

—from ‘The Simple Truth’ by Philip Levine

Image: Salt and Pepper Shakers at Purple Cafe by D Coetzee