[picsandquotes]

[crownsandcrystals]

[theartofgooglebooks]

Reanimated water stain.

From Medulla Aurea de Arte Grammatica Quatuor Partium Alexandri (1502). Original from the Bavarian State Library. Digitized July 5, 2012.

[queenbettina-blog]

[queenbettina-blog]

when your daughter tells you she is too fat

Don’t give her some bullshit about how the entire universe could fit

inside her torso; there’s just so many stars that it fills her up

and that’s why her body feels so inflated.

Instead, tell her how her ancestors carried their grandmothers

on their backs high up into the mountains, lungs pumping like fire,

how this wide expanse of skin came from something so beautiful and strong.

Make her imagine how the ground will tremble in her wake too

because of how badly it loves her and is anxious for her touch.

There will always be another woman with a thigh gap,

but your daughter’s thighs touch like the hands of two lovers

who have found each other again after so long.

Her thighs are a wishbone fused together, a fork in the road

leading to something so powerful even a phoenix could rise

from its ashes. Tell your daughter the world’s worst magic trick

is when she tries to make herself disappear.

Starvation is a trick of the weary, and your daughter,

she is not yet exhausted, because her veins love her so much

they refuse to go to sleep when she tries to shred them

out of all this self-hatred. Cup your hands over her belly

and place your ear against it; when she asks what you are doing,

tell her you are listening for the blizzard that will keep her alive.

Her blizzard simply falls ten times as hard.

Do not tell her she is beautiful just the way she is;

tell her she is beautiful the way she was, the way she is now,

and all the ways she will be later.

[jopolniaczek]

[queenbettina-blog]

Superwoman

I don’t wear a red cape.

I can’t scale buildings like a salamander or leap across canyons

twenty miles wide. There are more ghosts between my sheets at night

than the ones who knock on my neighbors’ doors at Halloween

begging for tootsie rolls and instant popcorn.

My first thought upon opening my eyes in the morning is how to stop

permanently waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

And my version of self-love is like the game of tearing petals off daisies,

except each and every one stands for “I love myself not, I love myself not.”

But that does not mean I don’t have superpowers;

they’re just a little hidden, like flower bulbs beneath frozen ground.

I may not save people from flaming windows or dangling fire escapes,

but that does not automatically erase the victory

of trying to save myself every day. And let me tell you, that is a battle

so hard to win: I have been so thirsty for oblivion

that eventually my veins got dehydrated when I tried to unzip them.

So I learned how to take the watering can of my own blood

and filled them back up, filled them to the brim,

and not letting a single drop spill took superhuman strength, let me tell you.

I may not have huge biceps that could rip a phonebook in half

without even straining a muscle, but my heart is a muscle too,

and like any muscle it gets sore. Bandages and antiseptic

are supertools too. It just took me awhile

to figure out how to use them properly.

I don’t wear a red cape.

I can’t scale buildings like a salamander or leap across canyons

twenty miles wide. I don’t have a huge S emblazoned across my chest.

My superpowers come from teaching myself how to survive

when all I wanted to do was be one of the people

that heroes are supposed to save.

[crownsandcrystals]

[queenbettina-blog]

[sexyyuglyy]

[only-watching-for-the-eyesex]

Olivia…fucking…Wilde

[breathebreathe]

I love her haha

[queenbettina-blog]

You know how people buy drinks for girls in bars? Why can’t people do that in book stores? Like if I’m looking at a novel in Fully Booked and some person walks up to me and strikes up a conversation and offers to buy the book for me there is a lot better chance of that working out in their favor

[queenbettina-blog]

They don’t tell you that you’re different. They don’t hold your hand up to the sky and show you that your skin is darker, your hair is black and your eyes are a deep chocolate brown. Your eyes are a colour that will never change. They wanted to be kind about it, I suppose. Tucking you into bed at night, eyes filled with questions that they could never answer. You learned the answers early. The wind was knocked out of your lungs and you broke ribs. You came home with cuts on your hands and your shoes were missing. You took different back alleys to school, and when you handed in your notebook at the end of each day, you hoped that your teacher saw through the practiced smile. You hoped. But nothing happened. You began to run faster, pack a lighter bag, crawl into impossible spaces so that their long shadows wouldn’t find you. Even now, when the skies darken, you pace more swiftly. You have been raised in a home where you are not different, but yet the world sees you for all the things that you cannot change. You learned a long time ago that you would never become them, no matter how much you bathed in milk or rubbed your skin red and blistering. The scars would grow back, darker this time.

[yidan]

marianne faithfull

[queenbettina-blog]

Finished four books within 23 hours? Dear, that’s true love

[queenbettina-blog]

I should really be taking my own advice.

[queenbettina-blog]

What frightens me isn’t getting close to someone, letting them explore their way through every little nook of my chest and find the sweetest spots. It’s not gaining love and learning again what it means to not just be alone but alone with someone else. It’s the way their name begins to familiarize itself with your tongue, twirling around it and hiding out in your mouth. You don’t think, your lips play with your tongue which plays with the roof of your mouth like they’re crawling themselves personally inside. They make a home inside of your mouth, and when it’s made you can’t help but to say it like they’ll always be there. It’s not the affection that scares me, it’s the name. The taste it leaves behind, what it would be like to become strangers for some odd years and find yourself dizzy when your mouth re-learns it again. It terrifies me to have a memory like that nestling under my tongue, waiting for me to speak on it again. Always waiting. You can’t get rid of a name.

[queenbettina-blog]