[stlowens]

Ocean Vuong, from “Tell Me Something Good.”

[geryone]

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over, Anne de Marcken

[wovi]

lovers, of course, are notoriously frantic epistemologists, second only to paranoiacs (and analysts) as readers of signs and wonders.

*

adam phillips, on flirtation

[petaltexturedskies]

Margaret Atwood, from "February"

[electroshocktherapist-deactivat]

people r always saying “get therapy” 2 ppl who have actually had too much therapy and need to do two years of a brutal physical labor job instead Genuinely no more therapy-speak and obsessing over the supposed intricacies of your average mind for you get your ass on the Alaskan salmon fishing boat

[weltenwellen]

Franny Choi, from "I Guess By Now I Thought I’d Be Done With Shame"

[8-bitfiction]

[weltenwellen]

Jenny Xie, from "Zuihitsu",  Eye Level

[maldarchive]

Long-worn, tattle-taled, wonder-struck, of course you were full of spite the minute you saw me again. All these months of preparation for absence in a single moment: dissolved, disregarded. I felt some kind of disrespect although there was hardly enough time to calibrate a reaction as such. You and me, we're all sentiment, you said, we're soft as sand, we're slipped off. Well! It isn't the worst to be seen by you; I can imagine many worse fates. For instance, the forest in the morning. For instance, waking up unable to lift my hand.

*

Casually resting on your bed I remember the deep green spread You were far away, on the phone or something, and for once I thought: What a beautiful man

*

Come on then, don't drag this on. I'm not doing this to protect you nor am I doing this to hurt you. In fact whatever I am doing right now is agnostic to your gentle heart.

The last thing he ever said to me was: stay dead.

In response, I wrote a poem that ended with:

I obey your absence,

I break and maul; I destroy

the kitchen, myself, the bed.

For you, I learn

the art of staying dead.

He never liked my poems; I was sure as hell he wouldn't like this one. But I suppose, sometimes, that's exactly the point. To be abhorred, enraging, unbearable. Pull me out then, feather plucked, needle swung. I'm as terrible to remember as I am to forget.

*

In seeing you again all these years later the best I can think is to withdraw any forgiveness I might have accidentally offered

It doesn't serve me well to be good Better I feel unconquered and bitter The anger really does wonders for me My skin's clearer than it's ever been

[amouthfulloflove]

“I obey your absence, I break and maul; I destroy the kitchen, myself, the bed. For you, I learn the art of staying dead.”

— WE SURVIVED, AS WE DID, Aditi Nagrath

[voirlvmer]

“Part of having a body means whatever can be felt can be forgotten. Forgetting is like sleep, like water. Heavy wet brain. Clear swollen dreams. It is some kind of relief, I guess, that whatever I am will be gone one day.”

— Sanna Wani, “Who is the Sun, Asking for Sleep?”, My Grief, the Sun

[weltenwellen]

Natalie Díaz, from “Grief Work”, Postcolonial Love Poem

[filmnoirsbian]

07/29

[staticsomething-deactivated2025]

[like orpheus, I am not strong enough to not look at what I want]

[tombsaint]

on death with 1. lilies abounded, @petfurniture, twitter; 2. frances molina, “o’death”

[weltenwellen]

Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, Rien ne va plus

[weltenwellen]

Ocean Vuong, from “Not Even”, Time Is a Mother

[weltenwellen]

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, from “And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes”