Holly Black, The Prisoner's Throne

[text: "I want," she says. "That's my problem. I want and I want and I want."

"What do you want?" he asks, voice soft.

"Everything. Charm me. Rip me open. Ruin me. Go too far."]

[text: she walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies]

AE HEE LEE, from "Prelude"

[text: Let me tell you how I wished for a long, unfractured life: I slurped noodles, threaded needles. But again and again I dreamt I was a series of footprints pressed deep into the earth, covered in snow.]

Chen Chen, "Elegy for My Sadness", When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

[text: Maybe the centipede in the cellar knows with its many disgusting legs why I am sad. No one else does. I want to be a sweetheart in every moment, full of goats & xylophones, as charming as a hill with a small village on it. I want to be a village full of sweethearts, as you are, every second of the day, cooking me soups & drawing me pictures & holding me, my inexplicable & elephant sadness, with your infinite arms. But isn't it true, you are not always why I am happy. & I promise it is true, you are almost never why, why I am sad. You are just in the same room with me & my unsweet, uncharming, completely uninteresting sadness. I wish it could unbelong itself from me, unstick from my face. Who invented the word "ennui"? A sad Frenchman? A centipede? They should've never been born. They should've seen me in Paris, a sad teenage exchange student. I was so sad & so teenaged, one day my host sister gripped my hand hard & even harder said SOIS HEUREUX. BE HAPPY. & miraculously, I wasn't sad anymore. All I felt was the desire to slap my host sister. See, I was angry in Paris, which is clearly not allowed. One can be sad in Paris (I was) & one can be in love in Paris (I was not), but angry? Angry in Paris? Now, I am in love-- with you!-- though sometimes terribly sad for no good reason, & not so much angry as guilty when you say to me, Don't cry, don't be sad, as if my sadness always need to be your sadness? I wish I could write an elegy from my sadness because it has suddenly died. I wish I could mourn it by kissing you again & again while neither of us can stop laughing, a kind of kiss where we sometimes miss the mouth altogether, a kind of kiss I think every single dead person in every part of the world must crave with violent impossibility.]

Franny Choi, from "The Mantis Shrimp Speaks"

[text: This is the only way I know how to tell someone what I want, to describe the infinitely unfolded accordion of my heart. To love with a rage gone blind]

— Franz Kafka, from Letters to Milena (via lumamonchtuna)

[text: I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.]

Abigail Chabitnoy, from "Soon the Weeds Will Be Blooming"

[text: I am tired of feeling this world on fire.]

Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

[text: To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.]

Geographies of Light, Lisa Suhair Majaj

[text: we plant grief drench it with our tears it will not grow]

Raena Shirali, from "conjuring anew"

[text: so you are a spine with several protrusions

that doesn't make you unlovable]

ON FEMALE BEAUTY:

1. “Pretty” by Jewel Kilcher, from A Night Without Armor // 2. “pretty isn’t pretty” – Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS // 3. “The Lucky One” – Taylor Swift, RED (Taylor’s Version) // 4. “jealousy, jealously” – Olivia Rodrigo, SOUR // 5. “Body Dysmorphia Disorder” by Shawn Cross // 6. “Nightmare” – Halsey, If I can’t have love, I want power (Deluxe Edition) // 7. “Pretty Hurts” – Beyoncé, Beyoncé // 8. “Mrs. Potato Head” – Melanie Martinez, Cry Baby

[image 1 of 8, text: Pretty There is a pretty girl on the face of the magazine and all i can see are my dirty hands turning the page

image 2 of 8, text: [verse 2] you can win the battle, but you'll never win the war you fix the things you hated, and you'd still feel so insecure and i try to ignore it, but it's everythin' i see it's on the poster on the wall, it's in the shitty magazines it's in my phone, it's in my head, it's in the boys i bring to bed it's all around, it's all the time, i don't know why i even try

image 3 of 8, text: you had it figured out since you were in school everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool so overnight you look like a sixties' queen

image 4 of 8, text: i kinda wanna throw my phone across the room 'cause all i see are girls too good to be true with paper-white teeth and perfect bodies wish i didn't care

i know their beauty's not my lack but it feels like that weight is on my back and i can't let it go

image 5 of 8, artwork of a figure grasping their stomach, their fingers are long and thin their flesh bulges between their fingers. The figure is thin, their ribs visible, with long hair. Their faces is shaded like a skull, their legs drip off into sharp, shadowed points. beside them is written "too thin too big too thick too much too little". There's an artist's signature in the corner @ shawncoss

image 6 of 8, text: stared in the mirror and punches it to shatters collected the pieces and picked out a dagger i've pinched my skin in between my two fingers and wished i could cut some parts off with some scissors

image 7 of 8, text: [bridge] ain't got no doctor or pill that can take the pain away the pain's inside and nobody frees you from your body it's the soul, it's my soul that needs surgery (it's my soul that needs surgery) plastic smiles and denial can only take you so far then you break when the fake facade leaves you in the dark you're left with shattered mirrors and the shards of a beautiful past

image 8 of 8, text: it's such a waste when little girls grow into their mother's face but the little girls are learnin' how to cut and paste and pucker up their lips until they suffocate (haha)

kids forever, kids forever baby, soft skin turns into leather don't be dramatic, it's only some plastic no one will love you if you're unattractive

oh, mrs. potato head, tell me is it true that pain is beauty? does a new face some with a warranty? will a pretty face make it better? oh, mr. potato head, tell me how did you afford her surgery? do you swear you'll stay forever? even if her face don't stay together?]

BEE LB, from "friction polish"

[text: i hush myself to sleep. i fear myself awake

the patterns of silk catch light and dust and i rush it all away. i sit in my box of dirt. cleave dark from beneath each nail.

loosen my tongue and then strain once more. i forget the you that is here or not here. remembrance burdens; burnishes to a sheen.]

ON LIVING:

1. “Steady Yourself” by Jewel Kilcher, from A Night Without Armor // 2. Haruki Murakami, from Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (via @quotespile)

[text 1: We are the living and the living must love the world It is our duty to fill out hearts.

text 2: We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty, Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.]

Jewel Kilcher, from A Night Without Armor

[text: The Inertia of a Lonely Heart

The world is full of cripples and endless nights and broken fruit and calls that never come through and restless dreams that fear being awake and stars that lose themselves and waves that are always leaving and bitten mouths and lonely bars and rosy nipples rosy as dawn rosy as the first blush of youth and tired people and lonely hearts opening, orbiting crashing into open mouths and hungry eyes and empty-handed lovers; the inertia of loneliness a miserable force.]

Hieu Minh Nguyen, from “The Understudy”

[text: Beside him, I am almost somehwere I'd like to be for a while.]

Clarice Lispector, tr. by Ronald W. Sousa, The Passion According to G.H.

[text: I waited for the strange feeling to pass,]

Kaveh Akbar, from “Personal Inventory: Fearless (Temporis Fila)”, Calling a Wolf a Wolf 

[text: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This may be me at my best.]