[apodyopzis]

He traces road maps of blue veins on my skin, talks about how hungry I make him, that he'd eat me if he could. I wordlessly offer him my arm. Go ahead. He gives it only a soft-mouthed bite, but I would probably let him tear me apart, I'd let him do anything.

—Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

[apodyopzis]

[apodyopzis]

—William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"

[apodyopzis]

Take my heart and hurl its fragments to the moon, the trees, the beasts, in the air, the dark, the waters, so that nothing returns to me ever again.

—Anna de Noailles, tr. by Jean Morris, from Poems "Ariadne's Lament,"

[apodyopzis]

[apodyopzis]

from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait (1995)

[apodyopzis]

I tremble beneath your touch like a tensed bow quivering with arrows and sharp imminent hisses. My blood burns like the blood of hounds sniffing their prey and ravage. But beneath your voice my heart surrenders in devoted and submissive doves.

—Rosario Castellanos, from On the Edge of Pleasure