& yet we rise

they/she. 26. abolitionist. poet.

[feral-ballad]

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.

Olivia Laing, from The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

[weltenwellen]

Warsan Shire, from “Assimilation”, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

[mournfulroses]

Yannis Ritsos, trans. by Kimon Friar, from a poem featured in "Erotica: Love Poems,"

[weltenwellen]

Wildness Before Something Sublime Leila Chatti

[virginiewoolf]

Carrie Fisher, from The Princess Diarist.

[savagedefectives]

pond, by claire-louise bennett

[weltenwellen]

Alex Dimitrov, “Poem Written in a Cab”, Love and Other Poems

[weltenwellen]

Ocean Vuong, from “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

[blossomfully]

Sue Zhao

[geryone]

Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente

[feral-ballad]

“Am I free? There is some thing still holding me. Or am I holding it?”

— Clarice Lispector, tr. by Stefan Tobler, from Água Viva

[thesweetiepienovels]

Some is better than none. Some is better than none. Some is better than none. Walking for three minutes, is better than nothing. Drinking a glass of water and eating a snack, is better than nothing. Wiping down the counter, is better than nothing. Small things are not nothing. Small things are not nothing. Small things are not nothing. You don’t have to achieve grand things if all you’re capable of right now is the smaller things. They are still achievements. Don’t do nothing just because you don’t think you’re capable of doing bigger things, just do something you’re capable of today. 

[liberatingreality]

Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives.

Jonah Lehrer

[titsay]

[financeprincess]

Sorry to break it to you but you literally have to face your fears and slaughter them. Otherwise you will live a small life that you do not want. You literally have to view your biggest fears and attack them head on. You have to fall into the abyss to find your way out. The easy path does not exist. There is no get out of jail free card. You have to allow yourself to die a spiritual death over and over again in order to reinvent yourself into the person you are actually supposed to be. And you have to be painfully honest with yourself and the people around you. It’s horrible but it’s truly the only way.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

you will not feel stuck forever. you’re actually slowly but steadily moving forward in ways you don’t always notice.

[daweyt]

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘In The Ruin."