EXIT WOUND

"If something leaves you it doesn't go without a fight."

[thoughtkick]

“I wonder how much of what weighs me down is not mine to carry.”

— Unknown

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“I could never heal up what happened. That’s just the way it is. I can’t even hardly remember what happened. It’s like a gap. But it left me alone in a way that … I haven’t gotten over.”

— L. M. Kit Carson & Sam Shepherd, from the screenplay Paris, Texas (Road Movies / Argos Films, 1984)

[thedeadofflandersfields]

Pigeon steals poppies from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia in order to build a nest beside a stained glass window.

[humansofnewyork]

“It wasn’t an official marriage. We didn’t register. But we had a plan. I was earning good money even though I was young. I was already a specialist at the age of nineteen. She was very beautiful. We’d been together for four years. She was a good person and very easy to talk to. She’d met my family and everyone loved her. At the time I was helping to construct a new subway line in Moscow. I came home from work one day and she was gone. There were no cell phones back then. Nobody knew where she was. She’d last been seen getting into a private taxi with her friend Natalya. A lot of people were disappearing during that time. The police stopped searching after a few months. She wasn’t seen again. There’s a line from a Russian poem. It says: ‘We love just once in a lifetime. And spend the rest of our lives looking for something similar.’ I’ve had other girlfriends after Oksana. But I don’t remember their birthday. Oksana’s birthday was July 9th. She was a Leo.”

(St. Petersburg, Russia)

[heartcountry]

I want your downfall, your corruption, your lonely throne, your violent slumber. I think about you as love lost to a closing door, and I’m full moon howl. I’m ocean grief. What a privilege it is to break loudly. To have been loved at all in all this chaos. What a privilege it is to daydream our own blooming. To stop paying the rent for this pain that’s made a home inside of us. To put an eviction notice on its door. To turn all the lights on in this heart of darkness, this body full of rain. I almost imagined you as a body leaving, and like that you came back to me. I’m sorry it took so long. What a privilege it is to be a war ruined by love. To be a battle ruined by grace. My quiet angel, my gentle surrender.Do you know what emptiness you’ve killed just by existing?

Y.Z, you’re all honey and none of the sting (via rustyvoices)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

Twenty years ago there was a life for each of us to turn away from or embrace. A song returns to remind me of what I must have felt, and when it’s over, I play it back again. Each time it’s true. Don’t we look beautiful in the picture no one ever took, the clear sky unfurled above us, the wind ruffling our hair, everybody’s real life just about to begin?

Lawrence Raab, section 1 of “The Uses of Nostalgia,” What We Don’t Know About Each Other (Penguin Books, 1993)

[qpulm]

Katatsumori (Naomi Kawase, 1994)

[findingmitchi]

Remembering my youngest brother. We miss you. Get well soon.

[oliviacirce]

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she Did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used— She stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and Would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and Found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering Questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag— And was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers— Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands— Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped —has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via oliviacirce)

❤

[findingmitchi]

12 days before Christmas! #restfinally

[freshbrewedlife]

Our Food Stories

[wnq-writers]

when you’re not here anymore I find you in music

Jerry Saintilus (via wnq-writers)

[thelovejournals]

I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else… and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more… and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned.

Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters (via thelovejournals)

[the-final-sentence]

‘I will find you, I promise.’

Ilona Andrews, from Clean Sweep (via the-final-sentence)

[schuylerpeck]

I. Nights start off like a great first date. You’ll believe you were meant for the one bedroom apartment kind of life, and spend the evenings strutting every square foot in just a thong; butt cheeks bared, and God, nothing has felt more natural. II. The body is not familiar with comforting itself. This is something I have to learn. I know we don’t remember the days we were so worried about walking; how to use these two heavy legs to get there, but we did. We still can. This is how it feels to learn, to understand the prospects of caring for yourself. III. My dog fits the silhouette you left in the second pillow just fine. We curl up like semicircles sharing the same warmth we store for winter. His snore is about eighty-nine times cuter than yours, and he lets me know he’s still there. It’s nice to have a change. IV. Just because I spent most days alone didn’t mean they were wasted. V. The ten-hour loop of thunderstorms so I can fall asleep. Breakfast for every goddamn meal of the day. The duets I kill in the shower. The romantic comedies I’m not embarrassed for watching with anyone else. Looking good the days I want to look good. Wearing leggings and a high school sweater when I don’t. VI. Romance didn’t move out when he did. In the summer, I wait for meteor showers, buy nice wine, and sit outside to watch. I have refreshing conversations with the dog. Make nice dinners. Sleep in on Saturdays and pick wildflowers for the kitchen vase. I don’t compromise for myself. I know what I need. VII. I can’t tell you I wasn’t lonely. I was. I still am sometimes. The difference is, I know how to deal with it now. I don’t try to drown you out with anyone else. I learn to swim.

Schuyler Peck, Things I Learned While Living Alone (via schuylerpeck)

[thequotejournals]

I’ve learned a lot this year.. I learned that things don’t always turn our the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I’ve learned that there are things that go wrong that don’t always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I’ve learned that some broken things stay broken, and I’ve learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.

Jennifer Weiner, Good in Bed (via thequotejournals)

[hplyrikz]

I hope that someday, somebody wants to hold you for twenty minutes straight, and that’s all they do. They don’t pull away. They don’t look at your face. They don’t try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms, without an ounce of selfishness in it.

Jenna, Waitress (via hplyrikz)

[tristamateer]

I said I’d never write another poem about you, but everything is a metaphor for the way that we left each other. Birds flying south for the winter. Rivers running to the sea. The moon stuck struggling in its orbit and never really going anywhere at all. The other day a coworker asked me how you’ve been and I thought that he was joking. It took me a full minute to put it together. I’ve gotten so good about not flinching at the sound of your name that people don’t know I’d still throw myself mouth-open into the ocean for the chance to drown somewhere you might see it.

“This Is What Baggage Looks Like” Trista Mateer (23 of 30) after Ashe Vernon  (via tristamateer)