Serendipity

"I will be your longest night, and your brightest morning" Damalina. 25. Psycho-Gemeni.

[ophanym]

how i wish i could tell you of all the things—good and bad, sick and beautiful, the deep grooves of my brain and the soft spongy betweens—

i couldn’t fit you in my heart if i tried: all your light and sweetness and softness against my tiny heart, my unkempt hands, my too-wide mouth.

you should’ve left when i yelled the first time; then the second; then the wrong words, the bad timing, the foggy memories. you should’ve left and i shouldn’t have allowed you so near.

i love you (curse) i love you (plea)

i am afraid you are so much—and not what i wanted. i’m not sure what i wanted; the empty feeling again, the hurt, the feeling of being small; senseless, useless, unimportant enough to not matter what i do or feel. and you are so much; lively and smart and soft and caring and beautiful and and and

you are holding my hand and i am so afraid.

i am not what you need but i am what you want—refeeding syndrome—and you are what i need but not what i want—avitaminosis—and i am so afraid. this is just me saying i am afraid.

i am afraid of wanting. i am afraid of not wanting. i am afraid of loving. i am afraid of losing. i am afraid of you. i am afraid of your eyes. i am afraid of your voice calling out to me.

[inkskinned]

you're not quite an emergency, is the thing. you're just having a bad spell. so what if you can't ever really catch your breath. can't ever really feel at ease. a buzzing, terrible feeling.

but emergencies are loud, and passionate, and hit the floor. you are not a lion or a hurricane, you just live in a pretty okay apartment and your back hurts. you wake up and drag yourself out of bed and banish what if i was dead thoughts like cobwebs. you pick out your clothes and try to stay active. you apply for jobs on the internet.

the anxiety is a wave, and the depression is a spiral. the other stuff keeps things "colorful." you mitigate your symptoms and take your meds when you have them and you try to hang out with friends. you go home and your head is full of riverwater. no matter how much you sleep, you still stay tired. you journal and practice gratitude and build from the bottom upwards. and still, the haunting.

you're not a 911 call or a shriek. you're just staring up at the ceiling and feeling the house settle into your bones. you feel you are playacting as a wolf when you're only a sheep. not quite dry and not quite drowning.

over and over, you slog through the creek.

[moonlight-dove]

David Benioff, Troy

// Adapted from Homer, The Iliad

[billeeswords]

the beauty of impermanence

[mournfulroses]

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, from  “Women who Run with the Wolves,” published in 1992

[thespilledquotes]

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

[thespilledquotes]

“Sometimes it’s hard to know whether the whispering is coming from others or from the inside of your own head.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

[feral-ballad]

Joy Sullivan, from Instructions for Traveling West: Poems; “Of Wildflowers”

[quotespile]

“When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.”

— Edwidge Danticat, Krik? Krak!

[mournfulroses]

Wislawa Szymborska, from "Tortures," featured in Map: Collected and Last Poems

[a-hymnforher]

[weltenwellen]

Jason Bayani, from "The Story is the Love Language"

[hopelessvalentines]

your father is always mad and the music is always loud

[metamorphesque]

Letter to a Lost Friend, Barbara Hamby

[bakwaaas]

erica jong

[daily-spooky]

[xehasmenesithakes]

Τελειο τελειο

[existentialyearning]

Unknown || Dulce María Loynaz, tr. by James O'Connor, from Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems || D.H. Lawrence || Mary Ruefle || Aristotle || Artwork by Mask Obscura || Marty Robbins, You’re Breaking My Heart || Maria Montessori

[hopelessvalentines]

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.”