ii.

—only vagabonds can be poets. elle, she/her

[divorciada]

books i've read -> mexican gothic

She was the snake biting its tail. She was a dreamer, eternally bound to a nightmare, eyes closed even when her eyes had turned to dust.

[aaresx]

Albert Camus, The Fall

[glaciasm]

“You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.”

—  Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

[a-dance-with-the-absurd]

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

Fyodor Dosteovsky, Crime and Punishment (source)

[beguines]

Yes, there is a place / where someone loves you both before / and after they learn what you are.

Neil Hilborn, "Lake", The Future

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

“‘Never trust a survivor,’ my father used to warn me, 'until you find out what he did to stay alive.’”

— Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

[saintmachina]

In the Deep South, God is a cotton king, Trussed up in plantation whites and powdered over smooth with a little bit of talcum from Momma’s compact. He’s the Georgia dust that gets on everything, in everything, Caking the soles of bare feet sifting through cracks in church pews, and catching in your lover’s eyelashes.

In the Deep South, the Devil is a beautiful boy who swears and cheats at billiards on Sunday. He is the one who reaches up your skirt, pulls out the prayers your were saving for someday and lights them on fire with his tongue. He will sing hymns while feasting on your forfeit heart, call you blessed while peeling away dignity like stockings, then drag you out in front of the church to be stoned.

In the Deep South, the Holy Spirit is an old woman with hands brown and gnarled as the nuts she boils and a voice soft and dark as the Appalachian sky. She is the swamp kingdom matriarch children are sent to when sins need to be wished away like warts, the presence of whom straightens the spines of wayward souls and coaxes a “Yes Ma’am” from the devil’s own.

In the Deep South, Jesus is a mixed-race child with drops of destiny mingled into his blood and the names of the saints tattooed along his spine. He has his mother’s bearing, one that wears suffering nobly, and baleful eyes that speak of the sins of his forefathers. The word of God flutters from his mouth like butterflies with bodies baptized in tears and wings dipped in steel.

In the Deep South, angels drink too much. They sashay and guffaw and forget to return calls. They tell white lies and agonize over what to wear. In the Deep South, angels look very much like you and I, and they cling to each other with dustbowl desperation and replenish their failing reserves of grace with ritual in the hopes of remembering what they once were, what wonders they once were capable of performing

-Hosanna Americana by S.T. Gibson

[roadmovies]

“Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. I read the paper about suicides and murders and I understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one’s time, to take it philosophically, to be sensible. Where has gone the time when men fought, killed, died for a glove, a glance?”

— Henry Miller to Anaïs Nin

[theghostwrites]

[sanktilyas]

“He was Roux, and she was Ivy. Who else in the entire world would ever understand what that meant?”

[sanktilyas]

It’s a picture of a little boy standing next to a little girl. She’s sitting in a stairwell. He looks at her as she eats a piece of cake.

I flip it over.

Aaron and Ella

-

I turn around again, and this time, he doesn’t stop me. His eyes flare with emotion, and I watch the gentle movement in his throat as he swallows. A muscle jumps in his jaw.

“Marry me,” he whispers.

[winedarkarchive-deactivated2023]

Fernand Braudel, “The Mediterranean in the Ancient World” trans. Siân Reynolds

[sanktilyas]

DEATH AND THE FAWN (Azriel + Elain)

“you are to stay away from her.”

“you can’t order me to do that.”

[le-phenix]

“There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape.”

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (via henrydear)

[jadebride]

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make you black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick you price, I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.

Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

[a-dance-with-the-absurd]

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

— Fyodor Dosteovsky, Crime and Punishment (source)

[sanktilyas]

No one knew his name to curse or extol, so I spoke it softly, beneath my breath. “Aleksander.” A boy’s name, given up. Almost forgotten.