love is a yeti

i held death in my hand

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

Interactive :: House Saints by Hala Alyan

[annhathaway]

(Radiance, Catherynne M. Valente)

[larmoyante]

Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (via larmoyante)

[xshayarsha]

“The world shines / like a watery moon / my body and mind / glisten like porcelain.”

— Han Shan Te-ch’ing, from Mountain Living: Twenty Poems; A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry. Ed. J.P. Seaton.

[megairea]

“You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.”

— Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa (tr. by Paula and Keith Cohen), 1975.

[weltenwellen]

V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

[quantumchild-deactivated2016120]

in front of my mother and my sisters, i pretend love is cheap and vulgar. i act like it’s a sin– i pretend that love is for women on a dark path. but at night i dream of a love so heavy it makes my spine throb– i dream up a lover who makes love like he is separating salt from water.

Salma Deera, “salt”  (via virgoassbitch)

[firstfullmoon]

“In grief, we cannot explain the body, / its tenderness, its heaviness.”

— Jacqueline Balderrama, from “salvaje,” published in Public Pool (via lifeinpoetry)

[seaoflove]

wisława szymborska, from “in praise of my sister” in view with a grain of sand

[megairea]

“My rot is / as hungry as me. & when God asks me about love, I always respond / with cruelty.”

— Yves Olade, from Belovéd; Slaughterhouse, 2020

[morelifealways-deactivated20240]

“قالوا: تموت بها حبـاًً؟ قلـت: ألا آذكروها علـى قبـري لتحيينـي They asked “do you love her to death?” I said “speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life”

— Mahmoud Darwish 

[seaoflove]

wisława szymborska, from “water” in view with a grain of sand (1995)

[bostonpoetryslam]

Remember that before you were a girl, you were a prayer, a hymn.

Elane Kim, “SPECTROSCOPY,” published in Vagabond City Lit  (via facinaoris)

[deceptivelips]

when my mother married my father, she learned to speak his language, and he has been spending his entire life finding ways to thank her. there are days when he forgets her name, but there are days when hers is the only one that his tongue will allow him to call. I guess love is like that, you forget why you love people until they do something like give you a tissue when you’re sneezing. and it reminds you: ‘yes, this is why you have my heart. how silly and foolish was I to not remember this.’ when I was 20, my mother revealed to me that my grandfather divorced my grandmother and then married her again despite everybody he respected telling him not to. I guess love is like that—like a revolution. my grandfather told me that. he said that a revolution is when the world tells you not to love, and so you love as though you are fighting for your bones to stay in place.

Salma Deera, Long Live (via deceptivelips)

[fawnaura]

Kenneth Rexroth, from Sacramental Acts: Love Poems; When we with Sappho

[givemearmstopraywith]

“The corruption begins with the mouth, the tongue, the wanting. The first poem in the world is I want to eat.”

— Erica Jong, from “Where It Begins,” Fruits & Vegetables: Poems By Erica Jong (Holt, 1971)

[antigonick]

“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches… I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my ribcage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids… Is any of this getting through you, Buttercup, or do you want me to go on for a while?“ “Never stop.” “There has not been—” “If you’re teasing me, Westley, I’m just going to kill you.” “How can you even dream I might be teasing you?” “Well, you haven’t once said you love me.” “That’s all you need? Easy. I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.” “You are teasing now; aren’t you?” “A little maybe; I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard, and you never heard.”

William Goldman, The Princess Bride (via antigonick)