“You want to know what it was like? It was like my whole life had a fever. Whole acres of me were on fire. The sun talked dirty in my ear all night. I couldn’t drive past a wheatfield without doing it violence. I couldn’t even look at a bridge. I used to go out in the brush sometimes, So far out there no one could hear me, And just burn. I felt all right then. I couldn’t hurt anyone else. I was just a pillar of fire. It wasn’t the burning so much as the loneliness. It wasn’t the loneliness so much as the fear of being alone. Christ look at you pouring from the rocks. You’re so cold you’re boiling over. You’ve got stars in your hair. I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you And never walk back out.”
— Nico Alvarado, “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls” (via cannedheaven)
Until I come to understand that to be saved doesn't mean to save but to survive.
Dagna Ślepowrońska, tr. Regina Grol
Death wanted to be this beautiful but we buried it
Garous Abdolmalekian, Sea tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
A handwritten note, scrawled in Arabic on a torn cigarette pack, was discovered on the ground last week in Pozzallo as migrants filed off a ship. It was from someone initialed “A” to someone else initialed “R.”
“I wanted to be with you,” read the note. “Don’t you dare forget me. I love you very much. My wish is for you not to forget me. Be well my love. A loves R. I love you.”
كلمات عربية مكتوبة بخط اليد على غلاف علبة سجائر ممزقة عُثر عليها بعد إنقاذ مركب لمهاجريين غير شرعيين لإيطاليا من أ لـ ر The New York Times | T.B : Lynsey Addario
the tenderness….
All the bells say: too late.
John Berryman, Dream Song 29
Much has been said and written about the ‘haiku moment’ - that it blurs the distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘self’ and ‘other’; that in it the perception of the essential and accidental, of the beautiful and the ugly, disappears; that it reflects things are they are in themselves.
- Yoel Hoffman, Japanese Death Poems
and the moon is the mouth of a lover
Garous Abdolmalekian, Acquiescence tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
We live by the waters breaking out of the heart.
Anne Carson, Kinds of Water
It is a mistake therefore to compare someone writing about his own life to an exhibitionist, since the latter has only one desire: to show himself and be seen at the same time.
Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion
17th century astronomical art of Maria Clara Eimmart; celestial splendor from a forgotten woman who broke the bounds of her time.
(brainpickings.org)