tiptoe out of this mess

collection of quotes and poetry

[storybookprincess]

suddenly remembered this poem as i was making breakfast this morning & frantically googled “poem remembered to buy eggs?????????” & somehow managed to find it & it utterly knocked the wind out of me just as much as when i first read it

[twofigs]

sitting on the bus on a foggy morning and only thinking — is this, finally, my life? do i hold it with both hands? do i try to live?

[theradioghost]

when the times get rough and I lose sight of the goal i just. reread “the orange” by wendy cope again & remember. that’s where I’m going folks. sooner or later, whatever it takes.

[theradioghost]

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange— The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I’m glad I exist.

– “The Orange,” Wendy Cope

[larmoyante]

I let it go. It’s like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.

Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange (via kehrouac)

[6thlovelanguage-deactivated2020]

Callista Buchen, “Taking Care”

[6thlovelanguage-deactivated2020]

Kahlil Gibran, “On Joy and Sorrow”

[andtenderness-deactivated202601]

“I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, tr. by David McDuff, from “The Brothers Karamazov,” (via atreides)

[weltenwellen]

Mary Oliver, “The Swimming Lesson”, Devotions

[aridante]

Andrés Cerpa, “The Vault”

[catilinas]

Anne Boyer

[savagedefectives]

maggie nelson on eve kosofsky sedgwick

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

…but to get to the heart of things sometimes you have to cut through.

Florence Welch, from “Useless Magic: Lyrics & Poetry,” published c. 2018 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[thunder]

“If flowers can grow through blankets of melting snow, there is hope for me.”

—

Tyler Knott Gregson, Haiku on Love

(via adrenaline)

[weltenwellen]

I feel like a rock being skipped through the ocean—pain, relief, pain again, relief again, eventually destined to sink.

Adam Silvera, History Is All You Left Me

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

Squander it all! Hold nothing back. The heart’s a deep well. And when it’s empty, It will fill again.

Gregory Orr, “Squander it all!,” How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)

[lifeinpoetry]

When love comes through the vent, you press wet rags against the grill, lest you are smoked out of your loneliness;

Caroline Bird, from “The Rags,” In These Days of Prohibition 

[lifeinpoetry]

I do worship ancient hungers & chins dribbling blood, but I am so tired of the taste of my heart.

— Adrian C. Louis, from “Ghost Road,” published in Willow Springs Magazine

[weltenwellen]

You have dug your soul out of the dark, you have fought to be here; do not go back to what buried you.

Bianca Sparacino, The Strength In Our Scars