#litstack

[grasslandgirl]

2026.

lines from A Conversation With Myself, by me // La Danse, Matisse // as long as there is love, there will be grief, Heidi Priebe // she used to be mine, waitress // we're in love, boygenius // collage I made // angel tattoo I got this year // abstract painting of oranges reds and greens, by me

[paladinbaby]

@blueskittlesart // most wanted man, lucy dacus // ode to jenny holzer, margaret timbrell

[vilebird]

FUNERAL AFTER A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

a painting of a pale sky and bright blue sea crashing onto dark rocks and foaming. it's oriented the right way. - Day, by Frederick Judd Waugh

"and the man looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault over heaven's gates and he says the face of everyone you miss is up there and i know i know i can't see them but i know" - And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes, by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

"i've cut myself off. i can feel the place / where i used to be attached. it's raw, as when you grate / your finger. it's a shredded mess / of images. it hurts." The Door, by Margaret Atwood

"i found you / i found the door / but when i stepped through / there was no floor" I want you, by Mitski

a still from a video of a bright setting sun against a dark orange sky and dark blue sea, with the caption "don't cry" - The Green Ray (1986)

"i feel dead. / i feel as if i were the residue of a stranger's life" - The Lost Pilot, by James Tate

"the shuddering moan of blood, a song to calm the sacrificial, the loss across the river. the way a dying animal will look at you is seared into me. we tie together and all over again." - i cant remember what this one is sorru

"i am feeling numb. it's a curious feeling, and i get it all the time. my attention to the world around me disappears, and something starts to hum inside my head. far off, voices try to bump up against me, but i repel them. my ears fill up with water and i focus on the humming inside my head. / i am inside my skull. it is a little cave, and i curl up inside it. below it, my body hovers, unattached." - Madness: A Bipolar Life, by Marya Hornbacher.

"-though we're dry and waiting. part of me died here so another could go on. the body i raised-" - When They Say you Can't Go Home Again What They Mean is You Where Never There, by Marty McConnell

text: "there'll always be a few things / maybe several things/ that you're gonna find / really difficult to forgive" image: a black silhouette of a minotaur sitting on top of a pale pillar rising out of a pale maze, looking out at an orange sunset over an empty desert beyond the walls of its maze. the text is black letters on white pasted in strips over top. - Up the Wolves by the Mountain Goats and Minotauro by Jordi Garriga Mora. collage put together by @scatterghosts

"i know there are things i haven't survived." - Lord of the Butterflies, by Andrea Gibson

"it seems to me that the dead only return for love or for revenge. who did you come back for?" - White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi

a painting of a bright white bird on a background split between dark blue and black - Promised Land (2013), by Michael Creese

"and with or without your support, i will continue / what im trying to say is you never know what you've been through / til you pause and cough it out" - Cough It Out by The Frontbottoms

"painting all the mirrors black / i won't see you staring back / i'm getting lost forever / searching in the broken glass / trying to ignore the past / and put myself together" - Mirrors by 8 Graves

"saint calvin told me not to worry about you / but he's got his own things to deal with / there's really just one thing we have in common: / neither of us will be missed" - Saint Bernard by Lincoln

"so many bright lights to cast a shadow / but can i speak? / well, is it hard understanding / that i'm incomplete?" - Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance

"being in a completely normal nonthreatening scenario & environment and thinking 'i have GOT to get the fuck out of here' with the intensity of some trapped neurotic prey animal" - tumblr post by user @greelin

"but you know me / what can't i conjure into hysteria / and longing? / any place is a funeral as soon as i get there. / of course i'm the disaster / but you're the one foolish enough / to learn my name." - The Next Time We Talk on Facebook, by Clementine von Radics

"if your wounds are still open, trust / they are the doors to an answer, / and walk through." - You Better Be Lightning, by Andrea Gibson

text: "what a tremendous thing to learn from" image: black text on white strips across a blue-orange gradient - i forgot this one too sory

"when the body remembers, it bucks wildly / when we try to heal, the phantom smell returns / while in the shower, you break down / while you wash your body you realise it is not your body / and at the same time, it is the only body you have" - Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, by Warsan Shire

"that was the thing. you never got used to it, the idea of somebody being gone. just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking." - The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen

"the spirit is so hurt / it don't know the / body / it / looks in / the mirror / and asks, who is it?" - On/My/Aging, by Carolyn Marie Rodgers

"could we sit together in new bodies, shoulder to tender / shoulder, / the lovely and the thorned, the bitter and the failed, / the grave to the left of us, the sea to the right?" - 8, Always a Rose, by Li-Young Lee

"the fact of the matter is / you survived, / it's what you do. / death and you / walk side by side / all sigh and scythe / you stay alive. / and you have the right / but struggle to believe. / you're still allowed / to be alive. / it feels inappropriate." - It's What You Do, by Lena Oleanderson @lena-oleanderson

a painting of a bright orange sky at sunset, sun nowhere to be seen, over a pale sea crashing onto dark rocks and foaming. it's oriented upside down. - Night, by by Frederick Judd Waugh

[punkbarbarian]

a life you never thought you would know (will arc 3 thoughts)

@canisfamiliars // to the film industry in crisis, frank o'hara // busyhead, noah kahan // starparkdesigns // spring, mary oliver // times like these, foo fighters // wolf & lamb, gale o smith // the painted drum, louise erdrich // all these things that i've done, the killers

[masculinepeacock]

the arc of regression

My Father’s Son, Blake Rouse // Scott Carroll // Narcissus, Delmore Schwartz // @creacherkeeper // The Waves, Virginia Woolf // Field Dressing, J.L. // @miseria-fortes-viros // Prayer Can Be Anything, Karen Elizabeth Sharpe // Phillip Pilz (crop by me) // My Father’s Son, Blake Rouse

[ID: (1) handwritten cursive that reads, “i’m so fucking scared that i’m just you”. (2) a photo of a white tailed deer in the woods. (3) “THE FEAR AND DREAD OF THE MIND OF OTHERS”. (4) “in this case the toughest battle is talking to divine”. (5) “‘For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.’”. (6) my father takes me hunting to show me that he loves me // as if trying to kill things together will prevent us from killing each other”. (7) “the gods will not save me. i suppose this is a lesson in hubris. i am forever a flightless thing”. (8) “the clean dispatch of a blunt tool some call the priest”. (9) A photo of a wolf snarling. (10) handwritten cursive that reads, “i’m only my father’s son”. /end id]

[strangetorpedos]

[Image Description: A litstack of 10 screenshots.

1: “I am half afraid to hope for what I long for.”

2. XX. i want you to love me / fiona apple

“i’ve waited many years / every print i left upon the track, has led me here”

what it represents: nox’s desire to be loved & to be wanted. especially after leaving home, there was a lot of loneliness involved with that, and they really just want to have some sort of solid connection.

3. Travis Bickle: Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I am God’s lonely man.

4. describe it to them. You find ways to say, “You don’t want any part of this mess. I’m mediocre, aging rapidly, and poor. Do yourself a favor and leave me behind.” You want to be left behind, though. That way, no one bears witness to what you’ve become.

5. (all caps) They need to be friends

simply all the pcs growing up lonely for such radically different reasons

oughh

6: Without you, I am surely the last of our kind

Without you, I am surely the last of my kind

7: A text post reply from @creacherkeeper : okay i know you reblogged this from me but “literally cosmically-defined not cut out for greatness but you simply have to save the world anyway because we need you and there’s no one else” is something that can be soooooo

8: ME: How do you feel, now that we’ve traded hands?

YOU: Oh.

[YOU looks at ME’s hands, which are now YOU’s hands, & vice versa. YOU bends the fingers, closing the hands, turning them from hands into fists & then back again.]

YOU: I guess I feel much the same.

ME: Still scared?

YOU: Yes.

ME: Me too.

9: A series of discord messages between archats and rosebudded

(archats) theo: yeah 😬😬 at least none of us. died?

(rosebudded) nox: true! could’ve been much worse

nox: glad you’re holding up okay :)

10: I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

End image description]

emily dickinson / nox playlist / taxi driver / i’m broke and mostly friendless, and i’ve wasted my whole life / @creacherkeeper / lucy dacus / @creacherkeeper / a one act play in which not all problems can be solved, & not all problems are problems, but even so, some are / @strangetorpedos and @beatricexbenedick / wendy cope

library of lensa on love, loneliness, and duty

[paladinbaby]

a patch of white anemones

the iliad, tr. emily wilson / electra: a tragedy, tr. anne carson / the lathe of heaven, ursula k. le guin / @insomniac-arrest / the first bad man, miranda july / what resembles the grave but isn’t, anne boyer / rabbit heart (raise it up), florence + the machine / burrows end, @dimension20official / the burglar of babylon, elizabeth bishop

[Image Description: Ten images of text. The first image is a photograph of a book page but the rest are black text on a pure white background.

1: “You already know this story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand the unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.”

2: “Electra / And I know there is something all wrong about me - believe me. Sometimes I shock myself”

3: “The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”

4: “The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try there is no escaping being yourself forever.”

5: “Then I realised that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”

6: “Always falling into a hole, then saying “okay, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,””

7: “I must become a lion hearted girl / Ready for a fight / Before I make the final sacrifice / We raise it up, this offering”

8: “i think for myself, when I go back to that time, the number one emotion associated with it is tremendous shame and embarrassment which is the emotion it would take to never mention that to anybody”

9: “You were good to me, and I love you, / But I’m doomed” End ID.]

[vilebird]

BOTH TOO MUCH AND NOT ENOUGH

1) "I have been found wanting, Natalie thought; I have made myself unacceptable and am not worthy." - hangsaman, by shirley jackson

2) text: "meat must be beaten brutal into tenderness, that any body softens with violence, she grinds salt into the carcass, like a wound, a memory". image: a carcass of beef, cleaned, with the ribs on prominent display, painted in oils and rendered in thick strokes of red, orange, tan and white, on a plain dark red background. the text is cutouts on top, dark red text on light tan. - Family Portrait as Unfinished Meal, by Torrin A. Greathouse and Le Bœuf by Chaim Soutine. collage put together by @invisiblemonstrosity

3) a pale hand crushing ripe red strawberries, green leaves still attached, on a plain white background. - apparently by ouiloved on flickr, but they seem to have deleted.

4) bust photo of a tan person with a spotlight on them outside in the dark, head turned down, shoulder length messy wet black hair obscuring their face. their hand is raised to their chest and they are wearing a white tank top. fake blood is splattered and wiped around their chest and mouth. - i can't actually find this one all my attempts lead back to unsourced tumblr posts if you know where its from. help me

5: "You have no one who has any sort of consideration for you. You have had patience and endurance, and what have they done for you? Half-killed you." - carlyle’s house and other sketches, by virginia woolf

6: "try your whole life to be righteous and be good, wind up on your own floor, choking on blood" - sept 15th 1983, by the mountain goats

7: "such a waste of a girl, such rumination. i am obsessive. i contain nothing but the replay. i am blood and blood and replay. i am please don't go." - i put the coffin out to sea, by lisa marie basile

8: an image of a partially bald baby bird begging for food, drawn in the desaturated greens and black of a trailcam, on top, the text reads "i am asking you for something i need", on bottom, the text reads "why is it so hard to give it to me?" - trailcam baby, by @quezify

9: "was i raised without love? / or was i born unloveable?" - @psychwarded

10: "I, in my corner, with my monstrous needs." - As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh, susan sontag

11: "oh, i know that i'm not whole, and sometimes feel the flies swarming, like much of me is rotten." - roadkill ode, chad abushanab

12: a photo of a cut tree where much of the centre is rotted from fungus, accompanied by the text: "heart rot in pine. heart rot is the softening of a pine trees resinous heartwood, caused by an in-dwelling fungus. not all pines have it, but those that do make the excavation of a tree-hole next cavity easier for the red-cockaded woodpecker."

13: "rot made a home inside my body." - i know it's from "bloat" but cant find the authors name again. i think it starts with a c?

14: photo of an abandoned house in shades of brown and beige and orange, the walls are wet and scuffed and the drywall has been torn open in places, exposing the old lath. - abandoned, by @jaggedplains

15: photo of a mouldy strawberry, fading from bright red to grey-green fluff - Strawberry Gray Mold disease stock photo, by MediaProduction on gettyimages

16: "you ever feel like you were born with something rotten inside you and if people get close enough they're gonna find out" - tumblr post by @twoheadedfawnn

17: "we are meat, we are potential carcasses,' he once said. 'if i go into a butcher's shop i always think it is surprising that i wasn't there instead of the animal." - francis bacon

18: "you dangle on the leash of your own longing; your need grows teeth." - speeches for dr frankenstein, by margaret atwood

19: photo of a python hanging off a roof coiled around a black and white bird, poised to eat it - i heard some noise on the roof this morning, by candycane7 on reddit

20: "all that matters is that you want to hurt me. all that matters is that you want me." - when rome falls, by yves olade

21: "god told me i was forgiven and then he split me open" - god is made of hunger and i am made of dreams, by katie maria

22: "but this is not about love. once a pig is hung and cut straight, cut from rectum to neck, step inside her death like it is a room: that is how to touch her now. the lord said, you must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses. then came the end of the rib." - oh let's just be hogs, by gregory emilio

23: photo of a strawberry cut in half with its leaves attached. it is bright red, steel knife wet. the background is bright white and plain. - cut strawberry by liz west on flickr

24: photo of a handmade cloth sculpture of a dead autopsied pigeon, red zipper like an incision opening to its empty red interior, small cloth and thread organs arranged around it. - pandora: city pigeon, by jessica bartram

25: '"u need a therapist" actually i need to be euthanized' - tumblr post by deactivated user @122mg