[firstfullmoon]

Victoria Chang, from “Love Letters,” in The Trees Witness Everything

[195195119511951-deactivated2021]

“It was like being alive twice.”

Linda Gregg

[weltenwellen]

Natalie Díaz, from "Manhattan Is a Lenape Word", Postcolonial Love Poem

[juliamstarr]

June Landscape

Instagram

[firstfullmoon]

I woke early and asked you to come with me for coffee. You said, sleep more, and I said we only had one hour and you came. We didn’t say much after that. In the station, you took your things and handed me the vest, then left as we had planned. So you would have ten minutes to meet your family and leave. I stood by the seat dazed by exhaustion and the absoluteness of the end, so still I was aware of myself breathing. I put on the vest and my coat, got my bag and, turning, saw you through the dirty window standing outside looking up at me. We looked at each other without any expression at all. Invisible, unnoticed, still. That moment is what I will tell of as proof that you loved me permanently.

— Linda Gregg, from “Asking for Directions”

[firstfullmoon]

I dream of how I was running late & had to sprint at least five June-hot city blocks in order to meet you. I dream of how we walked (me a bit breathless & sweaty) into a little café together & right away got so caught up in talking I didn’t even think to order a drink till much later you reminded me, Did you want to get something to drink? & I felt so grateful to you, that you would cease being so interesting for a moment & give me the chance to get up because I was indeed very thirsty.

It was past closing time when we left the café & wandered into the park—Yes, I said, Let’s sit here & we sat there, a bench, a place on this earth for maybe five people at most though everyone knows it’s really just for two people at a time, that’s why benches were made & when they’re not serving their purpose they are rained upon & look more miserable than a child who has suddenly dropped her ice cream on the pavement. But how un-miserably we kissed, how the lamplight made everything the most anti-despondent green. The trees, the grass, the benches—our bench—all greenly awake, as we kissed & kissed. I’m dreaming,

yes, on the train heading home, that our kiss, the last before we parted, has yet to end, not entirely—that I’m carrying the sweet ghost of that kiss on my lips, while on your train, you carry it, too. Let’s say it takes all night for us to get home, the train having to make every stop, & everyone forgetting to step off the first, even second times, while we’re still kissing that kiss, that green, & June

— Chen Chen, “I Dream on a Crowded Subway Train with My Eyes Open But My Body Swaying”

[soracities]

“[He] went up to his room and lay staring out at the stars of the summer night, his whole being in a whirl. What was it all? There was a life so different from what he knew it. What was there outside his knowledge, how much? What was this that he had touched? What was he in this new influence? What did everything mean? Where was life, in that which he knew or all outside him?”

— D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

[written-w0rd]

Salma Deera, Letters from Medea

[lunchboxpoems]

AT YOUR AGE, I WORE A DARKNESS

several sizes too big. It hung on me like a mother’s dress. Even now,

as we speak, I am stitching a darkness you’ll need to unravel,

unraveling another you’ll need to restitch. What can I give you

that you can keep? Once you asked, Does the sky stop? It doesn’t stop,

it just stops being one thing and starts being another.

Sometimes we hold hands and tip our heads way back

so the blue fills our whole field of vision, so we feel like

we’re in it. We don’t stop, we just stop being what we are

and start being what? Where? What can I give you

to carry there? These shadows of leaves—the lace in solace?

This soft, hand-me-down darkness? What can I give you

that will be of use in your next life, the one you will live without me?

MAGGIE SMITH

[derangedrhythms]

It was April, I remember, though my spirit was December,

John Harding, from 'Florence and Giles'

[metamorphesque]

― Clarice Lispector

[archiveofyearning]

OPPOSITE SIDES OF WANTING TO BE GOOD 

Japanese Breakfast, Slide Tackle // Mary Oliver, Wild Geese // Patti Smith, Woolgathering // Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood // Saul Bellow, Herzog // Mitski, I Will // Florence Welch, Useless Magic // Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star // Mary Oliver, Dogfish // John Steinbeck, East of Eden. 

[sundaynightfilms]

The Worst Person in the World, 2021

[510315]

any love i showed you is yours to keep

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

“I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for the evening calm, I’m waiting for our time, the oblique light, this pause between day and night. Peace will come, surely. But I can imagine no other peace than that of our two bodies bound together, of our gaze given over to each other - I have no other homeland but you.”

— Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, July 17, 1949 [#71]

[blossomfully]

Confessional // Sue Zhao

[linkinmoon]

Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos