To live at all is to be bruised.
Life is a full contact sport.
We reach out, perhaps to be refused, 
perhaps to discover just the sort
of person we're meant to love
or to avoid. Pity those poor souls
that pass through the sieve of 
life like flour, soft & white, their roles
never challenged or usurped by
bad luck or bad choices.
Pity these frail things. Don't try
to warn or explain. Don't waste your voice.
Instead, delight in your bursts of bodily rainbow
revealing what you survived, what you know.

The opening line is from page 332 of Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent.