Brouhaha Magazine

A shelter for writing of all shapes, sizes, and varieties.

[brouhahamagazine]

You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. This is the way genuine learning takes place. That’s a very difficult way to live, but it also has served me. It’s been an asset as well as a liability.

Audre Lorde (via brouhahamagazine)

[seabois]

“Here is a handful of shadow I have brought back to you: this decay, this hope, this mouth- full of dirt, this poetry.”

Margaret Atwood, from “Mushrooms” in Selected Poems: Volume 2  (via down-the-rabbith0le)

[soracities]

But sometimes, I swear I hear it, the wound closing like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move my living limbs into the world without too much pain, can still marvel at how the dog runs straight toward the pickup trucks break-necking down the road, because she thinks she loves them, because she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud roaring things will love her back

Ada Limón, from ‘The Leash’ (via soracities)

[thegoodvybe]

There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or the right book, and it will understand you.

Bjork (via thegoodvybe)

[saloandseverine]

Like a snake, my heart has shed its skin. I hold it here in my hand, full of honey and wounds.

Federico García Lorca, ”New Heart”  (via down-the-rabbith0le)

[brouhahamagazine]

“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (via brouhahamagazine)

[wordsnquotes]

the wounds have changed me. i am so soft with scars my skin breathes and beats stars.

Nayyirah Waheed, Salt (via wordsnquotes)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I climb. I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.

Mary Oliver, from West Wind: Poems; “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[pigmenting]

writing as therapy. writing as healing. writing as discovery. writing as self-love. writing as making sense of the dark. writing as rebirth. 

[bookmania]

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (via exoticwild)

[inkskinned]

on days like this, i am small. i am quiet words, i am none of my teeth and fight and fury. i need you to be gentle to me. i need you to hold my hand. i need you to say: today your soul does not swell to fit your skin, and that’s okay. it’s okay to sometimes be tiny and shaking and afraid.

i am too tired and sad to take up space i’m sorry // r.i.d (via inkskinned)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I am aware, sure, I am aware. Catastrophically aware.

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath (via violentwavesofemotion)

[pigmenting]

january wakes up with the first light of dawn. swings his feet out from beneath the blankets to touch a cold floor. the air around his is quiet and crisp. today starts a new day. a day to be kinder. a day to be braver. a day to be more.

[brouhahamagazine]

Defining War

Dear homeland, do you hear me? I think of you when The wind breaks blue over the horizon. Mother weaves you into her quilts Flashes of mushroomed clouds pulse across the patches With her fingers she cross­-stitches the kingfishers, double­-knots the fins of the tiger sharks. She never moves from the loom like she was stitched to it by the seams of her pants. Father left a while ago but you knew that already. Dear brother, allow me to serve beside you Picture my fingers, stained with blackberry juice, splayed across a sword hilt. I whittle wood whistles and keen the mute song of the forest Me and Mother, we don’t go out no more I sit by the windowsill fish the creeks which pucker with minnows split milkweed stems with my teeth and watch the teapot boil over– There’s always a fallen warrior whose whispers are lost in the steam. 

[brouhahamagazine]

Here rests Hope. She was strong and forceful. Determined and ambitious. 
She was high spirited in her infancy, always trying to reach far-off places. She used to stretch her arms further than her fingers could reach. Drawing optimism in the air. She planted seeds where land is barren and sing sweet melodies on rainy days. She put smiles on lonely souls passed by on the streets. But Hope lived a hard life determined to break her. She took beatings more than any being should bare. She was drowned in the Sea of Misfortunes and Ocean of Disappointments. She fought hard with her blade of light, but dark days always seem to dawn. She never made it out alive. Today we mourn her loss. We erect this tomb as a monument to her undying spirit. A reminder of our foolish youth. Of promises she never kept.

Our Foolish Hope // f.a.

[desdeotromar-deactivated2021110]

Five Short Stories by Trans Women of Color

“The Girls and the Apple.” Jasmine Kabale Moore. The Coalition

“Waiting Room,” Jamie Berrout

Love and Comets, Gillian Ybabez

Coconut, Gabrielle Bellot. Small Axe Journal

Bonus: Watch Ryka Aoki read her story “To the New World”

[tristamateer]

In a universe parallel to this one, you and I stay up some nights, holding hands in bed, worrying about all the versions of ourselves that don’t end up together. Parallel You says, “Somewhere we never even kiss.” Parallel Me says, “Somewhere we never even touch.“ Parallel You supposes that the universe in which we never cross paths must be a kinder one than the universe where we make the effort to love each other and fail at it so miserably that we part ways and never speak again. Parallel Me says, "That universe doesn’t exist.” Parallel You says, “That’s not how this works.”

trista mateer (via tristamateer)