struggling to separate the human condition into finer and finer categories for the purposes of accurately tagging poetry excerpts
(long under the cut)
absence - emptiness, "one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."
animal imagery
bright - "and an intense love rushes to your heart, and hope. it’s unendurable, unendurable."
change (or lack thereof) - "what I want is what I've always wanted. what I want is to be changed."
cruelty
curse - inevitability, prophecy, story
cycles - "something happened to me [...] so it will happen to you." / "what they did to you, you did not do to me."
death (and grief)
divorce - "the spell is removed; I see you as you are."
the everyday - mundanity that saves you, mundanity that wears you down
family
gender - "there are places like this everywhere, places you enter as a young girl, from which you never return."
glowing darkness - "many people are perfectly happy for this unredeemed, self-destructive couple to be in their own black hole of self-hate. it's sort of this darkness that eventually glows with its own power."
hunger - "desire is a moment with no way out."
language - the imprecise nature of language
loneliness
longing - "I miss you more than I remember you."
looking back - orpheus and eurydice, lot's wife
love
memory
performance - "no one is watching, so why does it have to be beautiful?"
religion
shame - "You are embarrassed to be alive.”
suffering - "the pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix."
wound - "where can I put it down?"
wrong - "things have gone amiss."
yourself - "you will save yourself, you can’t help it." / "you have betrayed and destroyed yourself for nothing"


















