this is what's at stake.

when it hurts we return to the banks of certain rivers. (poetry blog / saving things)

[lifeinpoetry]

I’m tired of people looking at me for free. I want to be paid to be here.

Tracy Dimond, from “LKDFALDS;KF,” Sorry I Wrote So Many Sad Poems Today (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

One day i woke up & i’ve felt tired ever since

Prairie M. Faul, “I wanna shave my head, I wanna / leave this town,″ Burnt Sugarcane (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

i wonder how small of a love i can survive on my stomach turns in on itself i do not hunger anymore

Kiki Nicole, from blk/still/life (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

he […] has hands                          like the apocalypse

you could start a war with hands like that

— Kiki Nicole, from blk/still/life

[antigonick]

After screaming, [Cassandra] calls out the name of Apollo sixth times, then again a seventh time, but the seventh time, by shifting the inflexion of the name slightly, she shows its etymology. Apollo’s name is cognate with the Greek verb apollesthai, “to destroy utterly, kill, slay, demolish, lay waste.” By crying out “Apollon emos”, Cassandra can designate the god as “my Apollo” and “my destroyer” at the same time in the same words.

Anne Carson, excerpt of Cassandra Float Can, from Float (via antigonick) (via medeae)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.

Kate Chopin, from “The Awakening & Other Stories,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

…and I can’t rescue what never happened.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a diary entry featured in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (via violentwavesofemotion)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I try, I do. I try and try.

Richard Siken, from Saying Your Names (via screamingimscreaming)

[atawie]

i was so close to giving you everything. i was so close to making myself good for you, but i couldn’t stomach it.

caitlyn siehl, imagine an empty room (via atawie)

[friedectoplasm]

A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don’t look back, don’t be each other’s anchors, no nostalgia.

Embassytown, China Mieville. (via screamingimscreaming)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

My heart is out of its flesh-phase. / I am done with all of it,…

Mary Oliver, from West Wind: Poems; “The Garden,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[lifeinpoetry]

For some time, the only thing I could recognize was my own hunger.

Paige Ackerson-Kiely, from “The Greeting,” My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer (via lifeinpoetry)

[litverve]

Time hates love, wants love poor, but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

Carol Ann Duffy, from “Hour” in Rapture (via aseriesofgayevents)

[sunaches]

Come now, you promised yourself. You promised you’d live through this.

Clementine von Radics, from There Is The Worst And Then There Is More

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

The question now is, will my feelings for you be changed? I’ve lived in you all these months–coming out, what are you really like? Do you exist? Have I made you up?…

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West c. March 1928 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[tristamateer]

MY MOTHER MARRIED A MAN WHO YELLS In this way, he is like and unlike my father. A man who would raise his voice at anything to unnerve it vs. a man who would yell at a can of tunafish he couldn’t get open. One, I watched scream until my younger brother pissed himself. One, I watched curse at a chair he stubbed his foot on. Both times I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Truth is, the man doesn’t matter anymore. Just the timbre. Just the anger. Just the volume.

trista mateer (via tristamateer)

[sunaches]

But there's a certain point when you fall down the staircase, and you look around, and no one is amused anymore.

Sarah Hepola, from Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget