aurora

🪻

[lelif]

the beauty of life

- // @fairycosmos // ? // - // @cassidyshotchocolate // - // - // elsie de wolfe// @podencos // afternoon on a hill, edna st. vincent millay// rien ne va plus, margarita karapanou, tr. by karen emmerich// - // - // @ annalauraart on instagram// culpable, joy sullivan// - // @ jordanklancaster on instagram// @ niall.breen.comics on instagram// agatha christie// @plasticlove1984 //sweeter than fiction, taylor swift// the summer day, mary oliver

[dearauroraa]

he aims for the mouth because it opens the way time opens—whatever goes through never returns the sam

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

he wanted to tell her that the body was just this stupid little shovel we use to dig through the hours only to end up surrounded by more empty space than we know what to do with.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

you lose the dead as the earth takes them, but the living you still have a say in.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

"...even dying costs money. hell, it can cost more than living."

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

"you see, carrots become bright orange because it’s so dark in the ground. they make their own light because the sun never reaches that far—like those fish in the ocean who glow from nothing? so when you eat it, you take in the carrot’s will to go upward. to heaven."

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

why shouldn’t the dead receive new names? weren’t they transformed, after all, into a kind of otherhood?

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

it's beautiful here, which is why the ghosts never leave.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

he had not been forgiven and neither are you.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

we pay taxes on every check to stand on the sinking banks of a river that becomes the morgue of our dreams.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

the hardest thing in the world is to live only once.

The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

[dearauroraa]

bojack horseman wasn't just a show when bojack said "‎every time something good happens, i ruin it. that’s not an accident. i’m the thing that ruins things.” // and when todd said "you're all the things that are wrong with you" // and when beatrice said "you were born broken, that’s your birthright. and now you can fill your life with projects, your books and your movies and your little girlfriends, but it won’t make you whole." // and when princess carolyn said "i don't know how you expect me to love you when you so clearly hate yourself." // and when hollyhock said "did you ever think that maybe the reason you’re not happy is because you don’t want to be?" // and when kelsey said "you’re not the hero of this story. you’re not even the villain. you’re just some guy who ruined my life." // and when mr. peanutbutter said "it's so cruel to let people love you" // and when herb said "there's no other side. this is it."

[dearauroraa]

dear mom,

please stay with me / please leave me / please be alive all the time / please don't tell me how to live my life / teach me everything that i must know / don't teach me anything / meet me in every universe / never meet me as my mother / forgive me for every sin / i might never forgive you for anything / please hold me when i fall apart / please don’t ask me why i’m breaking / please be proud of me / please don’t expect too much / name me after the stars / forget who i am / be the one who understands / be the one i rebel against / make me your home / let me leave yours / sing me songs from the past / stay silent when i can’t bear sound / love me unconditionally / love me with boundaries / see me as your child / see me as a stranger / please stay where i can find you / please vanish when i need to grow / write me into your story / let me write my own / please be the beginning / please not the end / please, mom, be real / and if you can’t, please be kind in my dreams.

[metamorphesque]

Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Antonio Canova

by Sappho

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken

To Fanny Brawne (13 October, 1819), John Keats

The Kiss, 1907 by Gustav Klimt

The Meeting in a Dream, Jorge Luis Borges

Holy Things in This World, Emery Allen

You Are Jeff by Richard Siken

[dearauroraa]

I’m here now where you were.

The summer grass under my palms is your hair.

Your taste is the living air.

I lie on my back. Two juggling butterflies are your smile.

The heathery breath of the moor’s simply your smell.

Your name sounds on the coded voice of the bell.

I’ll go nowhere you’ve not.

The bleached dip in a creature’s bone’s your throat.

That high lark, whatever it was you thought.

And this ridged stone your hand in mine,

and the curve of the turning earth your spine,

and the swooning bees besotted with flowers your tune.

I get up and walk. The dozing hillside is your dreaming head.

The cobblestones are every word you said.

The grave I kneel beside, only your bed.

Rapture, Carol Ann Duffy

[dearauroraa]

there were flowers at the edge of the forest, cupping the last of the light in their upturned petals. i followed you in, under the sighing, restless trees and my whole life vanished.

the moon tossed down its shimmering cloth. we undressed, then dressed again in the gowns of the moon. we knelt in the leaves, kissed, kissed; new words rustled nearby and we swooned.

didn’t we? And didn’t I see you rise again and go deeper into the woods and follow you still, till even my childhood shrank to a glow-worm of light where those flowers darkened and closed.

thorns on my breasts, rain in my mouth, loam on my bare feet, rough bark grazing my back, I moaned for them all. you stood, waist deep, in a stream, pulling me in, so I swam. You were the water, the wind

in the branches wringing their hands, the heavy, wet perfume of soil. i am there now, lost in the forest, dwarfed by the giant trees. find me.

Rapture, Carol Ann Duffy