Warsan Shire (via quotemadness)
Melissa De la Cruz, Van Alen Legacy
“there is only me and you and the thing that is trying to swallow us. in every version of the story there is a fire: here, burning clothes in the backyard. here, throwing matches at the home i don’t live in anymore. again and the highway between our bodies, gone. on the train, a man tells you he is an angel and jumps off the platform. over the screaming, you tell me you’re starting to think there really is a god, like capital g God. like something that isn’t here to hurt us, just to watch us hurt. honey, you just want something to blame besides yourself. i get it, i’m tired too but is there any room for safety between the disaster of our bodies? if there is a light then i am going to swallow it. if there is a god then i’m going to make him cry.”
— blasphemies at 5th street station || s.o.
“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don’t guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it’s total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It’s feral. And it’s relentless.”
— Leah Raeder, Black Iris. (via gaynormabates)
Schuyler Peck, Equator (via schuylerpeck)
Qiu Miaojin, from Last Words from Montmartre (via weltenwellen)
Excerpt from a poem by Catarine Hancock (@catarinehancock)
Stephen King, Duma Key
Schuyler Peck, Soft (via schuylerpeck)
goosefire girl— wild. hungry. every poem I’ve written is a burning. did you think you could run from me? my matchstick blaze and your apple core. I eat you open-hearted under the noon sky. did you think you could be free of me? I birthed these hands, pulled out these veins. singlehandedly I built the mirror maze in your mind— did you think I wouldn’t catch up? crossbow loaded gun cocked ready aim fire did you think I was too far away? did you think we were two entities, separate and whole? did you think you could live if I wasn’t swallowing you cold? I’ve told you— infinite.
Venetta Octavia, mania screams
8/9/2019 (227/?)
i am lost, a fog within me
i don’t know if there is peace for me
if hope is only for the lucky
sorrow seems to be my blood
am i a person
or a memory
trapped in a body frail
with a soul discordant
i have dreams of sunflowers
wishing to be radiant like them
to mean something in existence
yellow bright as the sun
i am unknown
to the mind in this skin
i see teeth marks on my legs
shapeless in form
i feel sometimes
to disappear
for a shadow i am
living among the living
i am lost, tears build
desperate to be less of me
and more of something
else
Odysseus Elytis, ‘The Monogram’ (trans. Aliki Caloyeras)
it hurt to kill a dream, like ripping petals off a flower just as it starts to bloom, like trying to pull down the clouds and watching them disappear. if only we could trade sleepless nights for nights we fight to stay awake and still be who we are. so instead, I uselessly hold on to waking moments, trying to remain in this semblance of a day that still starts and ends with you. I don't know what you do. but I'd like to think you dream of summer nights where I am ready, where flowers bloom and only fear the crushing step of time, where I pull down the clouds for you and we lay, we lay, we lay, and float, and they never turn to storms. (if only we could wake up and still be who we'd like to be.) sweet sunshine girl, summer's girl, with all the stars in her eyes, I hope the next daydream treats you kindly.