sun-kissed

"If the ocean can calm itself, so can you. We are both salt water mixed with air."

[lifeinpoetry]

“Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade. Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you like a sparrow stunned with falling.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” Poetry (December 2014)

[lifeinpoetry]

We have lovers to text as we lay side by side wondering what they ate forgetting our own pleasure in the sunshine and rumbling inside of us are we seeking water food or hurt feelings

— Jasmine Gibson, from “Love Life,” Don’t Let Them See Me Like This

[shepraises]

It is fall,

and I can breathe again.

- a.k.

[notesbyasta]

“i wasn’t looking for anything before i met you. but then you came like autumn, and i fell like leaves do.”

- asta

[lifeinpoetry]

“Go to the ends of the earth / girl / go like a leopard chasing her longing / go like the grasses grown and cut and blowing over the valley by autumn fire-winds / Go away from the valley / girl / go to the city / go like a fighter / with gold ore precision / with penny-like pain / with plenty of power / Please ignore / what you can girl / the growls in your absence / the men with their ice-blocks melting in arms / the men with their mine-field hearts / The women like me / wishing you well / whistling wisdom into your spine / learn to lie to survive / girl / learn to outlast the flame / learn the art of surprise”

—

Brynn Saito, “How to Be Free,”

from Revolution House Mag (via commovente)

[lifeinpoetry]

“A kitchen is the best—I mean the saddest—room for tears. A bedroom is too easy, a bathroom too private, a living room too formal. If someone falls to pieces in the kitchen, in the space of work and nourishment, they must be truly coming undone. The bright lights offer no comfort, only illuminate. The floor should be vinyl and cold.”

— Heather Christle, from The Crying Book

[lifeinpoetry]

They want you thinking you’re bad at being a girl instead of thinking you’re good at being yourself.

— Andrea Gibson, from “A Genderful Pep-Talk for My Younger Self,” Pansy

[lifeinpoetry]

“pulling the trigger on god / suicide of the sky—the Out There”

— Savannah Slone, from “little hurts,” This Body Is My Own

[florial]

[utrip]

[florial]

You’re beautiful

[labella-instagram]

[florial]

You’re beautiful

[lifeinpoetry]

“I know what you want: a burial inside me. Have you ever opened an apricot, warmed by the sun, and found worms?”

— Diana Marie Delgado, from “The Kind of Light I Give Off Isn’t Going to Last,” Tracing the Horse

[lifeinpoetry]

“… if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

— Audre Lorde, from “Learning from the 60s,” address delivered as part of the celebration of the Malcolm X weekend at Harvard University in February 1982

[lifeinpoetry]

Listen, in the early 1920′s, women were paid to paint radium onto watch dials so that men wouldn’t have to ask

the time in dark alleys. They were told it was safe, told to lick their brushes into sharp points. These women painted their nails, their faces, and judged

whose skin shined brightest, they coated their teeth so their boyfriends could see their bites with the lights turned down.

— Paige Lewis, from “The Moment I Saw a Pelican Devour,” published in Sixth Finch

[lifeinpoetry]

I didn’t mean to fall in love with failure, its molting rapture, I didn’t mean to name myself from a necklace of silent vowels, I didn’t go looking for the bird, I entered through the empty cage, hips first

— Zaina Alsous, from “Bird Prelude,” A Theory of Birds: Poems

[be-artistic-deactivated20230306]

[velaneze]