[havingapoemwithyou]

joy is a promise by Sanna Wani

[theworldspins]

“Once in a while we meet a gentle person. Gentleness is a virtue hard to find in a society that admires toughness and roughness. We are encouraged to get things done and to get them done fast, even when people get hurt in the process. Success, accomplishment, and productivity count. But the cost is high. There is no place for gentleness in such a milieu. Gentle is the one who does ‘not break the crushed reed, or snuff the faltering wick.’ Gentle is the one who is attentive to the strengths and weaknesses of the other and enjoys being together more than accomplishing something. A gentle person treads lightly, listens carefully, looks tenderly, and touches with reverence. A gentle person knows that true growth requires nurture, not force. Let’s dress ourselves with gentleness. In our tough and often unbending world our gentleness can be a vivid reminder of the presence of God among us.”

— Henri Nouwen (via gloryfromdust)

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

A cicada landed in a tree halfway up the hill and tucked its wings together. The late afternoon sun dyed the road orange.

– Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies

[litandlifequotes]

Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly, "Love was here." In the finer print, quietly, "Love still is."

"As Long As There Is Love, There Will Be Grief" By Heidi Priebe

[weltenwellen]

Anis Mojgani, from "In May she came, in May she stayed, in May she was gone"

[metamorphesque]

"A Letter That Will Never Reach You", Hovhannes Grigoryan (translated by metamorphesque)

[fairydrowning]

– Sue Zhao

[TEXT ID: I know what you wanted. You wanted someone to save you. / No, I wanted somebody to love me. / I think it's the same. It's the same. END ID]

[lunamonchtuna]

— Richard Siken, I Had a Dream About You from Crush (via lunamonchtuna)

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

During the day he liked to go out. He liked to wander down the street to a coffee shop and read the paper, think about his play, order the rice pudding and eat it slowly, his brain aflame with sugar and caffeine, his thoughts heated to a usable caramel. It was a secret life, and it nourished him in a way he couldn't explain. He was most himself in a coffee shop.

– Lorrie Moore, from “Vissi D’Arte,” Like Life: Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990)

[arowitharrows]

so many people seem to be convinced that relationships are determined by outside factors rather than by the people in the relationship. "If you do xyz then your relationship is romantic", "if you don't do xyz your relationship is friendship" like I'm sorry that society convinced you that you have no say in what shapes a relationship but you can actually do whatever you and the people in your life agree upon. Be free.

[wedarkacademia]

“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.” ― Richard Siken

[mythologyofblue]

Death comes to me again, a girl

in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.

-Dorianne Laux

[floriental]

“When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven’t looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent.”

— Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

[plaguedocboi]

I hate the “open floor plan” that everyone is obsessed with in houses now. I want nooks and crannies and bizarre floor plans. I don’t need to be able to see what someone is doing on the other side of the house. I want places to hide and lurk and dwell in the shadows. I am the beast who awaits in the labyrinth

[feral-ballad]

Yrsa Daley-Ward, from bone; “waiting for the check to clear”

[geryone]

Love and Loneliness—Abdellah Taïa's Salvation Army, Edmund White

[jihadmilk]

genuinely concerning that people think "intifada," which means revolution is somehow an extremely violent antisemitic word. These phases of treating the simple fact of something being in Arabic and being seen as violent are concerning and will infact lead to Arabs facing extreme rates of violence. We've seen this with "Allahu Akbar" and we need to call out attempts of framing Arabic as a violent language