She was sweeter than red figs.

“I said to the almond tree, ‘Sister, speak to me of God.’ And the almond tree blossomed.”

[lallaimane]

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”

Che Guevara

[lallaimane]

“First, we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and "interrogated," all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.”

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

[photografya-deactivated20230917]

[lovecrumbss]

James Baldwin talking about love

[firstfullmoon]

Kim Addonizio, from “Review of Possible Signs and Symptoms,” in Mortal Trash [ID in alt text]

[h4nifah]

raspberry and milk chocolate brown butter cookies

[vodkatales]

For old times sake is actually such a heartbreaking and beautiful sentiment. Like, let’s do it for the love that used to be here. It is reason enough.

[kaschiert]

who’s gonna dance with me in the kitchen for the rest of my life

[karlvsn-deactivated20240312-dea]

[inkskinned]

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.

[wizardarchetypes]

i love you cities. i love you sounds of people. i love you cacophony of scents at dinner time as everyone cooks different food up and down the street. i love you neighbors playing loud music on the front stairs and laughing even louder. i love you rambunctious kids running down the street in the summer getting up to god knows what. i love you corner stores. i love you big cookouts and block parties. i love you spring wildflowers popping up in overgrown empty lots. i love you weeds growing from in cement cracks. i love you scent of clove cigarettes on the air. i love you friends running into each other on the sidewalk. i love you passing conversations in different languages. i love you grandmas on the bus. i love you graffiti. i love you murals. i love you kids’ sidewalk chalk hopscotch. i love you sounds of people cooking and doing dishes and listening to music floating out cracked kitchen windows. i love y

[kafk-a]

happy year-round valentine’s day to bakers, gardeners, flower shop owners, librarians, people with fruit stalls, hairdressers for babies, weavers, translators, candlemakers, beekeepers, anyone working the night shift, janitors, people who prune grapevines, swimming instructors, knife sharpeners, people who fix old clocks, birdfeeder builders, poets, lullaby singers, people who change letters on marquees, weather observers, flower recognisers, botanists, herpetologists, ornament designers, etc etc

[loveletters2myself]

[lallaimane]

Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms.

Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them

into moist muffins.

[ . . . ]

I want our summers

to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots

are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Baked Goods

[honeyrolls]

Strawberry / Lemon / Blueberry

[lallaimane]

Ode to Lemons

By Michelle Courtney Berry

Today, the sun-glazed bag of lemons adorning the white counter became in my imagination, not a bag grabbed hastily from supermarket bins overflowing with fruit, pepper, and melon but rather that each lemon was plucked tenderly from a limestone grove on the Coast of Amalfi, where the salt-tinged air is ripe with birdsong and each syrupy-sweet lemony-goodness is a fist-sized delight in my hands, that drops into a cradle of wicker and twine.

I pull the mesh bag’s netting loose, as though everything now requires reverence, as though I could honor the journey of hands—not my own— hands that brought such luscious fruit to market without the slightest recognition.

My own hands twist the golden orbs, over and over marveling at their scented beauty.

My hands were honored in this way by these heavenly lemons,

as I sighed in front of the kitchen window.

[martysimone]

Dita Von Teese | Perlez-Vous • floral eyelash lace + removable pearl straps + velvet bows with pearl pendants