It's Not Dark

And it's your troubled hero, back for season six.

[itsnotdark]

An independent, medium activity & selective writing blog for Matt Murdock. This Matt sits squarely in the MCU, with a dash of Earth-616 at the mun's discretion. 21+ only. Crossovers & OCs are welcome. Shoot your shot with AUs.

Themes include the vagaries of identity, ethical quandaries, crises of faith, systems & their limits, found family, and the tension between yearning to be seen and terror of it.

Hypocrisy, self-sabotaging behavior, tunnel vision, and moments of tenderness are all kinda baked in. If you don't wanna shake him at certain points (and hug him at others) then I'm missing the mark.

Rules | Dossier | Headcanon | Verses (to come!)

(Note: This whole blog is a massive WIP. Mun is a long-time writer, but new to Tumblr. Like his muse, he'll always appreciate a little bit of grace.)

[itsnotdark]

Heading back home for a week to visit family, never mind the heat and slow-brewing hurricanes. But at least I won't be working, so the chances of me writing things might actually tick up! We shall see.

[nightprompts]

&. 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐭𝐬* 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

(  dialogue  prompts  taken  from  thunderbolts*  (2025),  directed  by  jake schreier.  feel  free  to  edit  and  change  as  you  seem  fit.  ) 

❛ there is something wrong with me. an emptiness. ❜

❛ you weren’t listening to me. it’s like your mind is somewhere else. ❜

❛ do you think i like taking orders? ❜

❛ you shoot, i dodge. ❜

❛ you guys can never aim for shit. ❜

❛ can you please just say it normal? ❜

❛ how long has it been, huh? a year? ❜

❛ so you… you feel fulfilled? ❜

❛ look around you. i’m miserable. ❜

❛ the light inside you is dim even by eastern european standards. ❜

❛ i've just been wondering, you know, like, what… is the point? in any of this? ❜

❛ the point of work is fame and fortune. fortune buys friends, and love, and a lot of cool clothes. ❜

❛ why do you have this photo out? ❜

❛ we were so bad. ❜

❛ you were happy. ❜

❛ i’ll make you something. ❜

❛ yeah, this just isn’t working for me anymore. ❜

❛ i need you to follow the target inside and find out what she intends to steal. ❜

❛ you’re not even my target. ❜

❛ i’m not here for you. ❜

❛ i know who you are and what you’re doing. ❜

❛ what am i doing? ❜

❛ you’re working me. you’re trying to get me on your side. ❜

❛ you say you know who i am, so you know my story. and you know i didn’t have a choice who i worked for. but you do. ❜

❛ it’s my business card. in case you need some help or you wanna share some secret hidden evidence. ❜

❛ i’m not sure what’s happening here, but you’re all exhausting and my job is done, so... ❜

❛ god only knows the blood on your hands. ❜

❛ pretty ludicrous coming from the dimestore captain america. ❜

❛ that was funny. thank you. we needed that. ❜

❛ it was getting so tense in here for a second. ❜

❛ all right, um… tie yourselves up. ❜

❛ next time, why don’t you just text me like a normal person? ❜

❛ we don’t need to go rogue in the darkness, or whatever you people do. ❜

❛ what exactly are we looking for? ❜

❛ we’re looking for not stupid questions. ❜

❛ hey. didn’t think you’d come back. thanks. ❜

❛ are you hurt? ❜

❛ no, i’m fine. i’m fine. ❜

❛ you do not seem fine. ❜

❛ yeah, well, we’ve only just met. this is… this is how i am. ❜

❛ well, you guys should just go without me. it’ll be easier. ❜

❛ we all feel like shit sometimes. and loneliness, i get that. and that that darkness gets... pretty enticing. ❜

❛ you shove it way down. you just... push it down. ❜

❛ let’s just stick together until we make it to the surface, and after that, you can start a fight with a super soldier. get yourself killed. i don’t care. ❜

❛ so, none of us fly? what, do we all just punch and shoot? ❜

❛ you do not want to start the whole sob story game. i win. ❜

❛ well, you were just a kid, so… ❜

❛ i just think it might be nice to know that you didn’t really know any better. ❜

❛ cucumber, cucumber, cucumber. ❜

❛ growing up, somebody told me that you can stop a sneeze if you confuse your brain. i always just yelled “cucumber.” ❜

❛ you’re the boss now? cute. ❜

❛ anyone else have any pointless childhood stories to tell? ❜

❛ i will fight. you stay behind me. ❜

❛ i’ve always had these episodes since i was a kid. there’s a high, then there’s a big low, and then my memory just goes blank. ❜

❛ you were right, she definitely wants us dead. ❜

❛ this has the makings of a team that can raise to glory. a team that can bring light from the darkness. a team of heroes that can be on the wheaties box and have little kiddie toy… ❜

❛ let’s just forget about them, and let’s focus on you. and how perfect you are. ❜

❛ isn’t that what you want? to be accepted? to be chosen? ❜

❛ no one else sees it, but i do. and i think maybe your past is what makes you so perfect. ❜

❛ look, i’ve been where you are. you can run, but it doesn’t go away. sooner or later it catches up to you, and when it does, it’s too late. so you can either do something about it now, or live with it forever. ❜

❛ you want to be good? or do you want to be somebody who changes the world? ❜

❛ you can do anything. ❜

❛ i'm the only one who knows what your true potential is. and it’s limitless. ❜

❛ i don’t wanna hurt you guys. why don’t you just turn yourselves in? ❜

❛ you can trust me. i know you. ❜

❛ they’re not a threat to me, so why do i need to kill them? ❜

❛ there is no “us.” there is no “we.” ❜

❛ you’re not a hero. you’re not even a good person. ❜

❛ why would a god take orders from anyone at all? ❜

❛ i’m starting to think maybe you don’t know what i am. or what i’m capable of. ❜

❛ i'm not afraid of you. ❜

❛ well, then, chase me forever. ❜

❛ If you cared, you would have called. ❜

❛ i’m sorry. i don’t know how to do this. i’m not good at it. ❜

❛ i didn’t think you wanted me. ❜

❛ i’m late, but i’m… i’m here now. ❜

❛ all i do is sit and look at my phone and think of all the terrible things that i’ve done. ❜

❛ when i look at you, i don’t see your mistakes. ❜

❛ aren’t you tired of fighting? let me help you. ❜

❛ you can’t outrun the emptiness. ❜

❛ it’s what you said. we’re all alone. all of us. ❜

❛ i have these good days, you know? where i feel invincible. but then there are a lot of bad days when i remember that nothing matters, you know? ❜

❛ so you’re just gonna sit here and let it take over? ❜

❛ well, there’s no use in fighting it. ❜

❛ at least i found a nice room. the other rooms are much worse. ❜

❛ you can’t stuff it down. you can’t hold it in all alone. no one can. we have to let it out. ❜

❛ even if it doesn’t make the emptiness go away, i promise you it will feel lighter. ❜

❛ we can find a way out of here together. will you try and leave here with me? ❜

❛ there’s no death here. the pain only gets worse. ❜

❛ i have a great past, so i’m totally fine. ❜

❛ the most shameful thing of all was thinking you could be anything more than nothing. ❜

❛ wait. you think they care about you? you don’t matter. to anyone. ❜

❛ i’m stronger than you. ❜

❛ you thought you were gonna be some great man? some savior? you can’t even save yourself. ❜

❛ we will always be alone. ❜

❛ i’m here. ❜

❛ it will always be just us. ❜

❛ we’re losing credibility. which we had very little to begin with. ❜

❛ we’re running out of space? It’s impossible. this building is enormous. ❜

❛ i did the dishes though. ❜

[bloodpinning]

📚 from dex, for @itsnotdark ; the last wish by andrzej sapkowski

"I haven't got anything sharp on me. Have a look for yourself."

[itsnotdark]

Every time Matt Murdock tries to atone for pushing Ben Poindexter off a rooftop, the man reminds him why he did it.

Of course the former fed’s answer — and the smirk Matt hears in it — rankles. Who knows better than Matt how little sharpness matters when a projectile is employed by Dex? Matt has been pelted with rosary beads like bullets, staplers like shrapnel, and one time even a fucking snow globe. That night at Josie’s, he’d heard the wet crunch of a billiard ball cracking some poor woman’s skull, the wound every bit as lethal as the bullet hole that was making Foggy wheeze and cough up blood out there on the street.

It doesn’t need to be sharp. Dex turns everything he touches into an instrument of death; it’s his nature.

Matt cocks his head to the left until he hears the soothing crack of cervical vertebrae beneath his cowl, and feels some of the tension that currently grips every muscle and tendon in his body seep out with it.

“I don’t need to look.”

The raspy reply, threaded-through with contempt, implicitly acknowledges the pointlessness of any search. It concedes Dex’s strengths, which are undeniable.

But it recognizes his own, too, with equal parts menace and bravado. Even without ‘looking,’ or putting so much as a hand on him, the man in the mottled black-and-red body armor can tell you every single item and article of clothing Dex has on him right now with painstaking detail. No point in denying it, secret’s out, bared before the national evening news and replayed constantly on tiktok. The stuff of gifs and ringtones.

I am Daredevil, the blind lawyer had defiantly told the whole world. Might as well lean into the freaky powers of perception.

But banter isn’t why Matt had tracked this man down to the parking lot of his shitty little motel in Queens.

Why are you here, Murdock? It’s the deep baritone rumble of his vanquished foe, banished to an island like some oversized fucking Napoleon Bonaparte, and somehow still among the voices living in his head rent-free. Do you even know, I wonder?

“I told you,” Matt says, “to do your deed and then go and disappear.”

Or to die, Fisk’s voice helpfully reminds him from within. Neither of us are so lucky, alas.

“You came back. Did what you did.” Killed more people in that building across from the courthouse. Shot Buck Cashman. And maybe, in the bloody doing, saved his life or Karen’s or both. Matt can not simply let that choice rest. Not without asking the obvious question:

“Why?”

[kataireo]

While she'll never really know the mutate senses which allow Matt to operate the way he does, it isn't difficult for her to imagine — not the exact ways they feel, but the overwhelming tide of them in tandem. She has walked down Eighth Avenue hungover and nearly hurled at the scream of a passing firetruck, so when he talks about the time spent dedicated to tuning out, Karen follows the logic with ease. Gross, scary, painful ... she only grimaces a little when she remembers how badly she wanted to disappear at the realization he could hear all her office bathroom breaks.

This interview isn't about her though, at least not technically, and as Matt continues she begins to shift between Karen the friend and Ms. Page the journalist. A notch settles between her eyebrows while she listens, her countenance suddenly reminiscent of a stern near-paternalistic look Matt himself has turned on both Karen and Foggy in the past.

It's an ugly tale. He'll be able to hear the uptick of her beats per minute — it isn't the wild, desperate thing it might've been had she heard this story two years ago, notably. ( She's had a little taste of that now too, after all, and she's no longer so perilously in need of an outside party to find a semblance of justice for her. ) The whole thing isn't quite as premeditated as Karen once imagined, but she knows Matt now, and that toed line between planned and heat-of-the-moment sounds about right ... this isn't just twenty questions with a buddy, though. It's much more than that, even if it is just for her.

She clears her throat and sits up — she hadn't realized she was leaning forward as he spoke. "Why then, do you think? Why didn't you start listening sooner?"

[itsnotdark]

It’s an ugly tale that he’s told before. Karen’s reaction is muted by comparison — too engaged to be clinical, but distinctly observational. The lawyer in him knows her analytical remove might be in its own way more dangerous than Foggy’s fiery aggrievement, but it piques his interest. Matt has gotten few chances to see her in action as a journalist, and she isn’t the only one who suffers an excess of curiosity.

“Yeah… I’ve thought about that a lot.” Foggy’s accusations — which at the time had scourged him more deeply than Nobu Yoshioka’s kyoketsu-shoge — echo in his skull.

Maybe it isn't only about justice, Matt. Maybe it's about you having an excuse to hit someone!

He shakes them off with a little shiver in his broad shoulders. Presses forward. “My dad, see, he’d never wanted me to fight like he did. He’d come home beaten half-to-hell, and tell me that I had to grow up to use my brains, not my fists. Some part of me really wanted to do right by him.”

There’s something wistful in Matt’s tone and aspect when he talks about Jack; only reminiscing about Foggy ever rivals it.

“Anyway, I figured the law was one way of meeting the pain I sensed out there on the periphery. Helping people. But law school, that shitty internship, they showed me all the ways it falls short. Or worse, actively screws people over. By the time we quit, I was frustrated. Angry.” Sardonic mirth creeps in as he adds, “So... really, I guess you can blame the man in black on Parish Landman and Julia Zack.”

The answer is honest, more or less. But as soon as he punctuates it with that trademark Matt Murdock wry quip, he knows it's a little too pat. That's not what the moment calls for.

And so: “I think part of me also knew that if I ever started taking matters into my own hands, it’d be hard to flip that switch back off.”

[itsnotdark]

Questions of ethics have always been at the core of Daredevil, but the Netflix shows only engaged with politics obliquely. Born Again puts politics front and center (however imperfectly) and it’s made me think a little more deeply about Matt’s politics and his political influences.

Maybe unsurprisingly for a Catholic lawyer turned vigilante, I think Matt’s political beliefs are heterodox and sometimes even contradictory. It’s a weird synthesis of Catholic social teaching, liberal constitutionalism, and some leftist theory and praxis.

Matt was a hero worshipper of lawyers from early on, reading Thurgood Marshall opinions in braille at Fogwell’s Gym. The choice is telling: a civil rights lawyer who helped dismantle segregation before becoming one of the more progressive Supreme Court justices. Marshall was the ultimate example of someone who loves the law enough to challenge its failures from within. For Matt, it’s the stuff of myth, and it proves extremely sticky. (It was also probably not lost on grown-up Matt that Marshall ended up a persistent and powerless dissenter in an increasingly reactionary court, and was eventually replaced by Clarence Thomas.)

Matt picked up a lot of his moral and political vocabulary at Xavier High School, an all boy’s Jesuit school in Manhattan. Jesuits are among the most progressive of the Catholic orders, stressing a “faith that does justice” rooted in human dignity and solidarity. Institutions should serve the people, not the other way around, etc. It’s here Matt got his first exposure to liberation theology, which requires Christians to center the poor and address “structures of sin,” whether they are social, economic, or political. (Notably, though, Jesuits believe violence can only be used to address injustice or oppression as a last resort. Womp womp.)

Undergrad at Columbia gave Matt an even more rigorous and diverse education in history and political theory. He gravitated towards political thinkers like John Rawls… but also engaged with Marxist writers like Gramsci who challenged and complicated many of his preconceptions about politics, economic theory, and even religion.

But more than leftist critiques of liberalism, it’s his own his childhood experiences and his faith that keep him from ever becoming comfortably liberal. He’s seen firsthand how supposedly “neutral” systems reproduce or entrench inequality. And while the Church side-eyes revolution, it is very clear about the ultimate imperfection of human institutions.

For Matt, the law and political systems are terrains of battle, not guardians in and of themselves.

Law school sharpens his belief in the power of rights, precedents, and norms as tools, but also exposes him to how they can be used by the “bad guys” just as easily. He encounters corporate law, prosecutorial discretion, plea bargaining, and a million other places where law and his moral intuitions diverge. Legal studies and critical race theory arguments tell him what he already knew deep down watching the law send regular people in his neighborhood to jail, while politically connected predators like Roscoe Sweeney go free.

Even as he readies himself to become a lawyer, Matt is concluding that the systems he’s serving may not be flawed at all, but rather working exactly as intended by the powers that be. His work at legal clinics during his third year at Columbia Law and his frustrating months at Landman & Zack only underscore that quiet, gnawing certainty.

Then he encounters a nameless developer with a real hard on for rent stabilized units and a willingness to do a murder or twenty… and, well. The rest is history.

Matt leans a little more social democrat than democratic socialist. He’s not anti-market in the abstract, but he has seen how wealth purchases impunity and development displaces whole communities. In practical terms, he supports tenant protections, labor organizing, anti-corruption enforcement, and restrictions on development. He sees unions and community coalitions as important democratic counterweights to corporate political machines.

(If voting in the real-world NYC Democratic primary in 2023, he would have ranked Lander then Mamdani and then the rest, but not ranked Cuomo or Adams. In the general, he’d have voted for Mamdani on the WFP line.)

His views on prisons are complicated to say the least. After all, the shows are kinda all about the tension between his belief in redemption and his firsthand knowledge that violent actors can continue to prey on others if they remain free. In the end, he is an anti-carceral reformer, but not an abolitionist. He strongly supports diversion, treatment, and restorative approaches, while accepting incapacitation for actors like Fisk whose power is systemic and recurrent. He probably grudgingly supported Dex’s institutionalization at the end of S3.

His views on policing are likewise reformist but severe: he wants to demilitarize the police, create strong civilian oversight, and prosecute corruption aggressively. Public safety should be rooted in community consent, transparency, and strict accountability. (He knows that his nighttime activities as Daredevil are rooted in NONE of those principles, and feels a great deal of guilt over it.)

Anyway, if you think all of this looks much more like a white-collar progressive with some leftist sympathies than a dark woke revolutionary, I absolutely agree. It’s part of why Matt is so incredibly slow to come around to taking on Mayor Fisk in BA:S1 and is so uncomfortable with his status as resistance leader and symbol in BA:S2. He’s cursed with a leftist cynic’s grounded analysis of systems and power… and a childhood hope that, with a little bit of heroism, those systems can be redeemed.

I guess just call it Matt Murdock’s own version of “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

[kataireo]

a moodboard for @itsnotdark!

yeah, i'm a shadowboxer, baby / i wanna be ready for what you do / and i've been swinging around me / because i don't know when you'll make your move

[itsnotdark]

what kind of herb are you?

Garlic

You leave an impression wherever you go. Your heart is so strong, so determined, so willing to go after whatever hole you see in the world, whatever wound you need to fix next. You're there. You're justice, hot red and pure gold, fairness incarnate, a paladin in shining armor come to protect and cleanse and heal and yet sometimes you wonder if you're the most corrupt, dirty being in the world, a fraud, a monster in hero's clothing. The world is so intense and you are so small, so fragile, and no matter how hard you try you're never good enough. You want to be good. You want to be good enough. You try so hard and yet the world is so dark and angry and cruel. Perfection is always just out of reach and you want things to be okay so bad you bleed with it. You just want things to be right, to be good, to be fair, but you don't know if they ever can be. If you can ever be.

hat tip @kataireo

[cinematicnomad]

WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2025) dir. rian johnson

[itsnotdark]

what's the purpose of a prophet, if not to see meaning in trouble? / fisk

“Is that really how you see yourself, Mr. Fisk?” Matt scoffs, incredulous from across the stately table that dominates Mr. Donovan’s conference room. His lips twitch briefly towards an expression too nascent and aborted to parse. His hands inch forward along the polished oak, almost of their own accord, with fingers tensing like they want to clench and squeeze and grapple. “As a… prophet? Even for you, that’s a little grandiose, isn’t it?”

He feels the staying touch of Foggy’s hand on his forearm. It’s a gentle reminder for him to keep his cool, but Matt brushes it off with a flare of his old waspish irritation. Because he knows it already. If this mad gambit has a chance in hell of working, Nelson, Murdock (& now, Page) need to be on their game. Ray Nadeem might not get the justice he deserves, not in this world, but a wrongful death suit could at least give Seema and Sammy the comfortable life that was the lure Wilson Fisk used to damn him. It could bleed the architect of some of his outrageous wealth, sully his name even further, and maybe, just maybe, set the record straight on a guy who died trying to do right.

But it is no easy thing to stay calm when sitting opposite this mountain of a man, a living monument to narcissism and avarice and cruelty. Matt hears the heavy, incessant beat of his heart behind the big bones of his rib cage and all that obscene bulk. It’s the strike of a mallet on a timpani drum, again and again and again. There’s nothing Matt would like more than for that damned sound to stop. Stop forever.

Breathe. He uses the techniques Stick taught him to channel his anger instead of letting it overwhelm him. They work in this arena as well as any. For now.

“You do know that a prophet doesn’t usually get credit for prognostication when he’s the author of said events,” Matt continues once he’s recovered himself. Now his hands speak with him, all fluid gesticulation. “It’s a little like an arsonist saying they predicted the fire. Though, ah, to your point… I suppose you are the person who can best make meaning of your acts. Aren’t you?”

[kataireo]

More towards twenty questions? Huh. The notion is cute, in a quaint sort of way that makes Karen's nose scrunch when she smiles about it. And he must be serious about it, too, because he turns to face her — and before she can go 'Really?', Matt says something she wouldn't have predicted in a hundred years.

"Wait... really?" Off the record, obviously. Her jaw drops like the qualifier is offensive. It's better that way, though, she has to acquiesce. "C'mon -- you can't just drop that on me with no prep time." Except that kind of sounds like she doesn't want to ; course correction, before he takes it back. "I mean yes, obviously, of course yes. But..." She starts to waffle, gesturing about as words fail her. Now until sunset? It is so unfair, and so quintessentially Matt that she can't help tipping her head back and scoffing out a laugh. Game on, then.

"Fine. Okay." Karen sits up a little, clenching her jaw. It's an attempt to reign herself in, play it cool, but there's an undeniable edge of annoyance in her body language too — frustration with herself for failing, on the spot, to pay him back with a real zinger of a first question. Chronological order it is. "How'd you come up with the idea to go out as him in the first place? Logistically, I mean."

[itsnotdark]

Matt's crown dips when she gets flustered. By now she'll know that tell: it's how he gets when he's trying to hide how pleased he is with himself. Because, for all her friend's honest contrition over years of dissembling fuckery, there's some unrepentant part of him — the blind orphan forever underestimated — that still loves the thrill of the sandbag. Even with her. (Maybe especially with her.)

Head still ducked, he spreads his palms face-up on the blanket in an invitation, as if to say: Hit me with it. Game on indeed.

She might be frustrated at not kicking off with a zinger, but the pause suggests her first question might be weightier than she knows. "I guess it was gradual," he says after that brief mull. His voice has dropped a register. "Kind of an — evolution. A lot of growing up for me was learning to tune things out. Otherwise, you'd go crazy. You know?" It's a rhetorical question, of course. She can't know. "Not just because of the sheer quantity of stimuli… but the quality of it, too. I learned how not to absorb things that were private. Or gross, or scary." A beat. "Or, ah, painful."

To his left, he hears a dog burst into a run, with big paws tearing up turf and breath huffing. Then comes the crunch of a plastic frisbee plucked out of the air by strong jaws. A kid shrieks with sheer delight at the sight, and honestly the whole place hums with it. Chatter and laughter swells over the low brass of distant traffic.

It's the sun-drunk symphony of a city that has forgotten, at least for one holiday afternoon, to be afraid of anything.

But Matt clearly isn't there right now. He's in the past, and that smirk is long gone. "One day, a few months before we met, I heard something I couldn't ignore. A girl was crying in her room down the block. It turns out her father was… hurting her." Even now, the cords of his throat tighten. He feels the distant echo of that shock and impotent rage that had sounded through his whole body as he'd paced the rooftop of his building and thought the bloodiest of thoughts.

"I called it in, of course," he says, finally bringing his head up to face her again. "But CPS, they got nowhere. And I just. I couldn't stand by. So… one night I put on, God. It was just some black sweatpants and a hoodie. A wrap around my eyes, two more around my fists. Stalked him to the train tracks where he worked the night shift and —"

It's a slow breath he lets out. He can still hear the roar of the train, taste the copper on his tongue. Feel hunger for more.

"— put him in the hospital for a month. And told him that if he touched that girl again, I'd know."

While her interviewee doesn't look proud, he also doesn't look remotely sorry. It is strange to pull back the curtain on all the ugliness and violence he'd tried to keep from her in those early days, when he'd told himself the subterfuge was for her own protection. He prods inward to test for the shame and fear that she'd recently helped him discover beneath that shroud of martyrdom. He's mildly surprised not to find them, at least not right now.

"Anyway, after that it was like, I don't know, a switch had flipped. I started letting it in. Listening for people in trouble. And... there were a lot of them. That's when I started putting together the outfit you saw that first night, the Underarmor and the cargo pants and the nylon mask. It was just some crappy shit I bought online."

His lips twitch again, this time a little rueful. "Humble beginnings."

[notmorbid]

gilead, pt. 2.

dialogue prompts from gilead by marilynne robinson.

at this time of life, i refuse to be angry.

no one ever has that kind of courage who hasn't needed it.

maybe i don't understand as much as i should.

i don't want to be old, and i most certainly don't want to be dead.

people have stopped trying to see the sense in what i say.

whatever is coming, i'd be sorry to miss it.

i conceal my motives from myself pretty effectively, sometimes.

i love the way you talk.

i've heard this argument a thousand times and i hate it.

a person can change. everything can change.

sinners are not all dishonorable people.

i wish i could give you the memory i have of that day.

remembering and forgiving can be contrary things.

i always seem to give offense. i don't always intend to.

i wish i could've been like my father.

i do wish we could speak more directly.

sit down. let's give this another try.

when i was small, i thought the lord lived in the attic and paid for the groceries.

i'm trying to be honest.

it's when i try to tell the truth that things go wrong for me.

what is it, exactly, that you want to tell me?

the truth is the truth, even if no one remembers it.

i hope to die with a quiet heart. i know that may not be realistic.

i hate to think what i'd give for a thousand mornings like this. for two or three.

people love where they pity.

i do want to talk, if you're sure that's alright.

history could make a stone weep.

you always look like you're standing too close to a fire.

there are people here now who don't know me from adam. it's wonderful.

in every important way, we are such secrets from each other.

i do believe there's a separate language within each of us.

since it had to happen, i don't regret having been here for it.

somebody had to tell me a few things, sooner or later.

now i've been seemly so long, i'm almost beginning to like it.

it feels a little like returning to the scene of a crime.

i haven't lied in years. they say you can get used to anything.

when i was young, i thought a settled life was what happened to you if you weren't careful.

grace has a great laughter in it.

you'll be just fine.

how can i repay you for all this?

let's just be honest with each other for five minutes.

if your point was to make me angry, i am angry.

i'm not inclined to do much forbidding, these days.

i'd rather drop dead doing for myself than add a day to my life acting helpless.

as you know, i have considerable experience antagonizing people.

i'm no one you can respect.

i just wanted to tell you not to feel so bad.

you always seem to see right through me.

what's the purpose of a prophet, if not to see meaning in trouble?

i feel homesick for a place i've never left.

jesus never had to be old.

nobody ought to be as lonely as you look.

i understand why you have to leave. i really do.

we all love you, you know.

we had to wait a long time, didn't we?

hope deferred is still hope.

i will pray, and then i'll sleep.

[itsnotdark]

📚

📚for @deservetoknow.

"You still don't seem... I don't know... yourself."

North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud

[itsnotdark]

📚

📚for @pagefied.

"It happens once in your life, if you're the luckiest man on earth, an event like that."

a visit from the goon squad, Jennifer Egan

[itsnotdark]

📚

"You pursue the negative. You want to not give a damn, to exist without responsibility, without faith or friends or warmth."

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

[musesgonnamuse]

Send “📚” and I will flip to a random page in a book and use the first line of dialogue I see as a starter.

[itsnotdark]

another hat tip to @kataireo

take the quiz here.