[wldsunflwr]

It was an unusually warm Sunday in March. As I waited for Tatyana to let me into her studio, I shrugged off my winter coat and wrapped it tightly around my waist. Squinting into the sun, I turned away from her building, and then back towards it. I folded and unfolded my arms. I took out my phone and then quickly put it back into my pocket. Tatyana had come to my school only a few years before, and I had been blown away by her tenacity, wisdom, and activism. Back then, I had been too nervous to ask a question after her talk. And yet now, here I was, still nervous, and preparing to be interviewed for her art series, Stop Telling Women to Smile.

Stop Telling Women to Smile | A New Blog Post on Exploring-Self.com 

[serious]

You will not heal by going back to what broke you.

[misswallflower]

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

bell hooks (via misswallflower)

[lifeinpoetry]

—I know I have a heart like a wild thing with snapping jaws and matted fur but I’d hang up my hands on hooks for you, pluck out all of my sharp teeth for the chance to be easy.

Trista Mateer, from “How I Asked You to Stay,” Honeybee (via lifeinpoetry)

[tristamateer]

Nobody is in love with me and everything is still warm. Still soft. Still rosewater and a typewriter ribbon. Still cookbooks and salt air and sheer black lingerie. Still red lipstick. Still mostly kind. Still often uncomplicated. Still mints at the bottom of my purse, hair held back, pulse thumping through skin. Still sweet tea in a pitcher on the kitchen counter, a cold glass with three lemon slices, a full ice cube tray. I don’t understand how it’s all so light.

Trista Mateer (via tristamateer)

[vrban]

You remember too much,
 my mother said to me recently.
 Why hold onto all that? And I said,
 Where do I put it down?

Anne Carson, from “The Glass Essay” (via vrban)

[oofpoetry]

In the summer I stretch out on the shore And think of you Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.

Nizar Qabbani, “In the Summer” (via oofpoetry)

[gentlechamomile]

Sometimes you have to step away and remind yourself that other people’s limitations are not your own. If someone isn’t ready to exist in a new emotional, mental, physical or spiritual landscape, it’s not your responsibility to convince them otherwise.

Brittany Josephina (via mindofataurus)

[kushandwizdom]

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (via nezua)

[heyfranhey]

If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all.

Yogi Bhajan (via heyfranhey)

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

bell hooks (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[jaiwrites-deactivated20170523]

You have to love you right. That’s all you got. Even when everybody else is bent on loving you wrong, and wrong begins to look like it’s not that wrong, you got to love yourself right. Especially then. And you got to do it in public. You got to do it where everybody can notice and say, That girl there? She love herself. She love herself like she teaching a class in loving herself.

Asha Bandele, Daughter (via jaiwrites)

[tristamateer]

I still wake up with things to tell you. One day, I won’t. I will learn placid acceptance. I will stop panicking when I can’t perfectly remember the pitch of your voice or the curve of your jawline. The smell of cinnamon won’t make me sad anymore. At this point it’s not about finding someone to replace you. I have spread my love all over the place. It’s about trying to sleep knowing I live in a world that has your hands in it.

“I Still Forget We’re Not Even Friends” Trista Mateer

this is from my book Honeybee!

(via tristamateer)

[alllways]

Which do you want: the pain of staying where you are, or the pain of growth?

Judith Hanson Lasater   (via vvogued)

[wldsunflwr]

he is on top of you, his locs cascading down, veiling you both from the night, the dark, the deep. his rhythm is slow and sweet, like leftover drops of syrup cascading down the side of the bottle; like the honeybee as she pauses to suck nectar; like writing poetry on Sunday in the heat

soft connection,

a patterned blanket laid out in the backyard; long, slow conversation about Selassie, about love, about hurt, about laughter; wandering the neighborhood in the heat, in heat, with heat; soft kisses on the wrist, the back of the fingertips, the side of the mouth; even breathing in the stillness of the night

he makes your bed in the morning; sways with you on the morning commute, his fingertips stroking the nape of your neck; spends the afternoon making art, writing you poetry, thinking of your lips, thinking of where to take you to dinner, of whether this is too fast, too slow, too soft, too sweet,

soft connection

[copyr1ghts]

Stop thinking so hard about everything, stop over analyzing. Just go. Just do. If it feels right, just go with the flow. If it feels wrong, don’t think about it anymore and walk away.

(via nyu-tah)

[wldsunflwr]

Last night I thought of the way that you were always little spoon, my eyelashes fluttering against the back of your head, small kisses interspersed throughout the night at the nape of your neck, your shoulders, your arms. I missed the way you toss and turn in your sleep; make a symphony of noises when I ask you to scoot over; sleep diagonally and take up space, my space, our space. Hot breath in the morning and the heaviness of a brown blanket. I thought of the way you sometimes rise early, turn into me, and burrow into my chest. Carving holes into me, loving me even without loving me.