in you everything sank

tell me about your books, your visions made of flesh and light

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“Never mind. I invented you. I invented you, as far as my purposes go. I invented loving you and I invented your death. I have my tricks and my trap doors, too.”

— Alice Munro, from Collected Stories; “Tell me Yes or No,”

[franzkavkas]

“This tempestuous or floundering or morasslike inner self is what we really are, but by the secret process by which words are forced out of us, our self-knowledge is brought to light, and though it may still be veiled, yet it is there before us, wonderful or terrible to behold. So protect me, dearest, from these horrible words of which I have recently been delivering myself. Tell me that you understand it all, and yet go on loving me.”

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

[ameliamoved]

“(The graveyard shift has a certain quality to it. It makes you feel responsible, but you don’t know what you’re responsible for. Saving the world, maybe. Or at least keeping everything okay until dawn.)”

— Richard Siken, Editor’s Pages // Love From A Distance (x)

[alonesomes]

“Here is the ending before the beginning: I pick you out of my teeth like spinach. I take a bath and I don’t think about drowning myself. My sister spends the weekend at the apartment and doesn’t ask me about it, even though she can see that my teeth have gotten sharper since last time. Your name is just a name. I am still in one piece when I close the door. I say “thank you for everything” and wipe my mouth. You watch the Discovery Channel and see a lioness lick her bloody paws after a kill. You think of me and wonder if the grass was really so tall that you couldn’t see me coming. I am growing into something fierce and hungry. When I kiss your skin, I am only trying to taste your bones. Whatever is left of you, I hope it forgets me.”

— Prey | Caitlyn Siehl

[larmoyante]

there was a time before you but I can’t remember it now a time before your beauty and I were formally introduced I’m sure I lived without you but I don’t remember how can’t imagine living without these feelings you’ve produced just one glance and my life was redrawn just one word and my vocabulary changed I asked the time and you said ‘what’s the hurry?’ you asked my name and I almost forgot

David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility (via larmoyante)

[tristamateer]

I wake up in the middle of the night and I text you things like “why aren’t you in my bed? come eat a bowl of oranges off of me”. I don’t know what this means. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. Something about you and I in bed with sticky fingers and wet mouths is appealing to me even in half-sleep. Maybe oranges are a metaphor for life. Maybe I still don’t know how many seeds I’m gonna find in you. Maybe oranges are just supposed to mean summer heat because I’m sick of all this cold, cold, cold. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the only thing that means something is that I am always waking up in the middle of the night and reaching out to you. You with those warm hands. You with that wet mouth.

“Oranges” Trista Mateer (via tristamateer)

[tristamateer]

you say here is a casual reminder that i adore you and i say be not-casual about it, adore me un-casually, pretend it’s really as big as it feels sometimes i sound too much like a poet. if there is going to be a sweaty body panting over top of mine, i want it to be yours. cup my breast and call me sugar, think about remembering to buy coffee when you’re inside of me. this is a love poem. we forget to put out the garbage on the right nights and the milk goes sour in the fridge because i’m trying that vegan thing again and you’re never home to drink it. i buy it anyway. this is a love poem. i know it’s never really as big as it feels. someone looking in from the outside will always see something unremarkable. i’m okay with that. watch me misplace my metaphors. watch me put down my pen long enough to slide into bed with you and press my cold feet up against your warm legs. this is still a love poem.

Trista Mateer (via tristamateer)

[heartcountry]

I hope our ghosts aren’t eating you alive. If I’m to speak for myself, I’ll tell you that the universe is twice as big as we think it is and you’re the only one that made that idea less devastating.

Lucas Regazzi, excerpt from “Small” (via rustyvoices)

[tristamateer]

You’re leading me up the stairs to your apartment for the first time, and my heart is making fists in my throat. My heart is working overtime. My heart wants to use you as a punching bag. It wants to bleed all over you. It’s gross. It’s a mess. My heart wants to tie you up on the tracks and watch the train come. I just want to hold your hand.

“Heart Problems” Trista Mateer (1 of 30)

[tallsaint-deactivated20221218]

Richard Siken

E.M. Forster

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sappho tr. Anne Carson

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Everything I’m doing is an undoing, the deeds themselves are just misdeeds in the end.

Ingeborg Bachmann, from Three Paths to the Lake; “Eyes to Wonder,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[moody-poet-deactivated20180227]

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.

Sylvia Plath

I exist in two places, here and where you are.

Margaret Atwood

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies.

David Mitchell

I’m kissing you now—across the gap of a thousand years.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

Euripides (tr. Anne Carson)

[aseaofquotes]

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

[redpandamemes]

I̖ ̸̳ͬh̼̦̐aͬ̋́͝v̴̨͖̮ḙ̶͠ ̭̈n̩o͉̘ͫ̍ ̴̩͔̘̟͌̒̆̆ẅ̩̚͟ȉ̢ͪl̀l ̸̢̣ͭ̈́t̴͚͘o͘͡ ͇͝l̺i̶͎͓v̬͟e͓͕ͯ̏ ͕ͥ

[anagram-robot]

‘I will have to live on - Anagram robot 0.6. I find anagrams for stuff. I know I don’t always make sense, but I’m getting better!

[lifeinpoetry]

are you still happening there, in your body?

Joy Katz, from “December, Fever,” All You Do Is Perceive (via lifeinpoetry)

[unpetalled]

I wanted to be physically erased and start over again. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be there. I guess I wanted to be nowhere, I wanted to listen to my brain talk inside of nothingness. I wanted to be untouchable and have no need.

David Wojnarowicz, from Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration (via horrorshow)

[lifeinpoetry]

My heart’s a doe’s. A doe’s made for running away.

Fady Joudah, from “Horses,” Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (via lifeinpoetry)