meraki

sometimes love is just doing things without having to be asked, making a cup of tea for someone as they’re working, packing an extra lunch because you know they’re rushed for time. Love doesn’t have to be expressed in grand gestures, to me, the little gestures of love matter more.

— Sylvia Plath, The Letters of Sylvia Plath vol 1: 1940-1956

you don’t have to belong everywhere

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic

Ruth Awad, from “Let me be a lamb in a world that wants my lion”

― Margaret Atwood, You are Happy

when e.e. cummings said “i’ll live my life if it kills me”

when andrea gibson said “i suppose i love this life, in spite of my clenched fist.” & when ellen bass said “to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it”

when james baldwin said, “this is why one must say yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found-and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is;”

when 23 year olds say “im getting old” cause they get excited by mundane things…for the love of. we used to get excited by BOXES as toddlers. maybe we’re just reverting to our childlike joy did u ever think about THAT.

I was having just this thought the other day, and it was kind of beautiful. The idea that coming into adulthood some of early childhood wonder is reclaimed - how often do we hear of that? But this is a true and common instance of it. Loving the ordinary is wonderful, and can coexist with loving the extraordinary.

Botanical illustrations 

by  Beatrix Potter 

– Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Athena Nassar, from "Love Is Not Always Song, but the Swelling"

you have to choose healing again and again

healthy love exists and it’s worth being patient for

I am not convinced

you don’t have to be. the love will make its way to you in due time.

So you're saying the love is a persistence hunter?

yeah but like a little bloodhound puppy