Lily Fu

Artist, dreamer, doer.

[lilylikestodraw]

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering."

[lilylikestodraw]

"The year full of edges / Is heavy. I have left my body behind me, crying / In its dark thorns. Still, / There are good things in this world. / It is dusk. / The spirit of a tree begins to move. / I touch leaves. / I close my eyes and think of water. / I surrender. These useless days / Will add up to something."  2020

[lilylikestodraw]

Magic hour. The sun kissing the earth before it dips out of sight. Our fears streaming behind us in the dark as we angle our faces toward the light. Is it worth it? To relish something fleeting? This moment, this here, your hand in mine and the fire in your eyes is a tiny glimpse of eternity and I don't mind that it will be gone in a blink of time. I'm glad to have met you and to have shared this quiet moment in your arms. 11.8.14 

[lilylikestodraw]

"I used to be soft. I used to be so deeply emotional, I smeared my gelatin heart over everything. The world was my oyster, my playground, my storm. My emotions electrified me, thundered through my fingertips and became art. When you left, you took the wind and the water with you. I hardened under your loss. I used to dream of being so strong and steady, nothing could move me. Now I am. So strong. So steady. That nothing can move me. And when I sleep, I yearn for the day the skies cry and the trees shake again."

[lilylikestodraw]

“This year, I am relearning to be chosen. Which is to say, I am relearning the way a kiss swings its golden legs off the edge of your lips before falling into a red and laughing mouth, like a heavy, heavy poem. Which is to say, I am returning to myself, to water the houseplants hung in my corners and shake the dust from the shelves and reread the pages bent backwards. This year, I am relearning religion. Which is to say, God is a microwave meal and the sermon sits, swelling, on the brow-bones of the women who love me. Which is to say, this is a prayer and in my own way, I say it loud. Which is to say, I whisper it into the morning, when my voice is still remembering itself. This year, I am relearning to be touched. Which is to say, I am remembering the way to empty someone into yourself and walk into the night and become lighter, become light.” (ramna)

[lilylikestodraw]

Moleskine sketch #23: “I’ve been learning recently that it takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself. To take sips of the truth no matter how bitter it may taste or how uncomfortable it may make you feel. To look the truth deep in the eye, even if what you find leaves you hollow. Of course, the people you love deserve authenticity, the people you care about deserve sincerity, but you are deserving as well. You are deserving of the honesty you give others. You are deserving of the peace that comes with the truth. But sometimes that peace only comes when you confront those inner demons that you’ve been hiding from for so long. When you stop focusing on the honesty others deserve, and start focusing on the honesty you deserve. It’s easier to tell others the truth, and harder to be truthful with yourself. I’ve been learning recently that it takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself.” 

[lilylikestodraw]

"It’s May, and we are a never ending story. I’m not sure where we end or where we begin. I just know you are spring. You are belated hope and fresh air and fragile reaching. Your cheek against mine is a flutter of sunlight. A soft glow warming my barren heart. And I am warm, too warm. It’s searing. My heart is blooming out of my chest again. Blossom, blossom, blue. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to look at the sky. How does a flower bear to wither? I don’t know. I always fade when you go." Music: Cerulean (entire album) by Baths

[lilylikestodraw]

"I have moved so far away from you that I have become a myth; a lie you tell yourself each night. I am the one true thing you've held in the palm of your hand. Your name smiles at me from a crumpled envelope, addressed to the past, unsent and unseen. Inside there is a letter where I tell you a story about the moon, how night after night the darkness carved at the pale curve of her body until she became half the woman she was. There is a word that hurts my heart — one I don't ever say out loud. Like the shadow that lingers in the light, I can't separate myself from your memory. But there are some nights when I look up into the sky, and the moon is whole again."

[lilylikestodraw]

"Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness."

[lilylikestodraw]

your work is beautiful! has anyone ever told you before that you kind of draw like James Jean? Anyway it's so mesmerising. Please keep drawing. <3

He’s one of my favorite artists :D I’m glad you think that <3 thank you :)

[lilylikestodraw]

“Someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons, you must leave. Because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.”

[lilylikestodraw]

Moleskine sketch #19: “I am too full of life to be half-loved.”

[lilylikestodraw]

Moleskine sketch #20: “When she calls him ‘honey,’ she is making a choice. Behind the sweetness of the thing are hundreds of tiny working pieces: the hive, full; the home, him; the heart, them. She puts him in everything, and everything is sweet because of it.”

[lilylikestodraw]

Moleskine sketch #21: “I believe there is penance in yearning. There is poverty in giving too much of your heart. When your desire for another is not returned in equal measure – nothing in the world can compensate for the shortfall. Sometimes the loneliest place to be is in love.”

[lilylikestodraw]

[lilylikestodraw]

"How to say goodbye: Say it like an amputee, each letter a prosthetic limb. Say it because sometimes two just aren’t enough; sometimes you need an entire bouquet of hands to carry all the love, say it because the love always slips through your thousand fingers anyway, like sand, like floss, like water, like a song. Say goodness. Say grace. Say thank you for holding my hair. You held me when I couldn’t stay upright in the storm of myself. Say sorry for the mess. Say goldenrod. Say goose-feather. Say it with all eight muscles of the tongue, as if their leaving was a soft language that didn’t bite back. Say loving you has been the greatest kindness. Say I’ve carried your salt in my wounds. Cradled your heart in my gullet like a prayer, a sacred thing I was too afraid to want or release; say I release you. I deliver you now into the arms of the one who will love you best. Say beauty. Say bless. Say their name, one perfect time while it still belongs to you. Say it even when they refuse to say yours, your name shattering on the hardwood floor of their rejection, their name in your mouth like glass. Names of blood and names of fire. Names that burn when swallowed. Say it with your last breath. With your mouth of insatiable fury. Hungry as the sea, their name a kind of drowning."

[lilylikestodraw]

“Sometimes the sun sets & things that shouldn’t be
golden are golden. There’s a field.
There’s a lake & a tree & a bird. Sometimes I am goldenrod crowding a field.
Leaves fall from my branches
but I try to hold on.”