i used to weave crowns

XXV

[plathsyl]

"Now that I have lost you I cannot allow you to develop, you must be a photograph not a poem."

—Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

[plathsyl]

"I am still wading through her, she beats upon my doors and threatens my innermost safety. I have no gondola at the gate and the tide is still rising. Swim for it, don't be afraid. I am afraid."

—Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

[plathsyl]

"Why is the measure of love loss?"

—Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

[plathsyl]

"You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?"

—Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

[plathsyl]

The last thing that's needed is to judge your own heart, but then that's the first thing you go and do. A heart rushes to judge itself. A heart should have better things to do. A heart doesn't.

Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

[plathsyl]

Seeing Annie for the first time, something in Mira recognized her. It was like their relationship already existed. It wasn't this way with most other people. It was Annie's apparent pre-existence, which seemed impossible to explain, which distinguished her from the rest. And it was strange for Mira to think that, for other people, Annie was just someone passing on the street, that she was nothing at all.

Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

[plathsyl]

He began to ask me questions, as though he had learned to remind himself to do so, and I wondered what or who had taught him that lesson, which many people never learn.

Rachel Cusk, Outline

[plathsyl]

He spoke a refined and formal kind of English that did not seem wholly natural, as though at some point it had been applied to him carefully with a brush, like paint.

Rachel Cusk, Outline

[plathsyl]

He raised his eyebrows, which were silver and grew unexpectedly coarsely and wildly from his forehead, like grasses in a rocky place. It was this eccentricity that had made me answer him. The unexpected sometimes looks like a prompting of fate.

Rachel Cusk, Outline

[plathsyl]

Pure Colour — Sheila Heti

[plathsyl]

My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante

[plathsyl]

The fact that Anna is somewhere having coffee or a dream is an assault on me.

Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry

[plathsyl]

Jane Austen used to write 'How true!' underneath poems she was not fond of.

Mary Ruefle, “On Sentimentality,” Madness, Rack, and Honey

[plathsyl]

I am so sincere in my effort to be a good host that I lie; I think this probably happens all the time in poetry.

Mary Ruefle, “Kangaroo Beach,” Madness, Rack, and Honey

[plathsyl]

I find myself in a bind. I'm tired of female pain and also tired of people who are tired of it. I know the 'hurting woman' is a cliché but I also know lots of women still hurt. I don't like the proposition that female wounds have gotten old; I feel wounded by it.

Leslie Jamison, “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain,” The Empathy Exams

[plathsyl]

Nobody, Somebody, Anybody — Kelly McClorey

[plathsyl]

Other than a little criticism and some very long emails, I haven't written anything now for almost two years. And I think the space in my life has been cleared out at this stage, and it's empty, and maybe for that reason it's time for me to fall in love again. I need to feel that my life has some kind of centre, somewhere for my thoughts to return and rest. I know, by the way, that most people don't need any such thing, and I would be much healthier if I didn't.

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You