- all that wanting, right?, por devin kelly ⸻ i wanted just a bit of grief rather than despair. &, in my shame, i wanted my childhood back. i wanted to walk backward out of the room where i kept my secrets. i wanted to say i’m hurt before my hurt became a character trait i told no one but myself. when i wanted unknowing, i was given certainty, & when i wanted the hard & fixed line, i was given mystery. sometimes, i wanted to give it all back, but to who, i wondered, & how? i wanted a life to come out of my life, but instead i was left with my life.
- the goldfinch, por donna tartt ⸻ but sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, i found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that i could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.
- the waves, por virginia woolf ⸻ i choose out across the hall some unknown face and can hardly drink my tea when she whose name i do not know sits opposite. i choke. i am rocked from side to side by the violence of my emotion. i imagine these nameless, these immaculate people, watching me from behind bushes. i leap high to excite their admiration. at night, in bed, i excite their complete wonder. i often die pierced with arrows to win their tears.
- committed: on meaning and madwomen, por suzanne scanlon ⸻ i was on my own with my broken self. my grief, my terror, my terror that my life was broken, that no one would ever truly see me or know me again.
- the easy life, por marguerite duras ⸻ i was no one, i had neither name nor face. moving through august, i was: nothing. my steps made no sound, nothing signaled that i was there, i disturbed nothing. at the bottom of the ravines, frogs full of life croaked, educated in august things, in death things.
- it lasts forever, then it's over, por anne de marcken ⸻ one of the few real things. beauty. dreams. boredom. hunger. more than anything, hunger.
- letters to milena, por franz kafka ⸻ i am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something i only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.
- the bell jar, por sylvia plath ⸻ i saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because i couldn't make up my mind which of the figs i would choose. i wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as i sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
feb 6 2025 ∞
mar 10 2025 +