You Don’t Have To Put On A Shield At The Onset Of Your Day, But You Do Have To Realise That You Have

ARA PACIS Rome, Italy

→ Ara Pacis, also called Ara Pacis Augustae, shrine consisting of a marble altar in a walled enclosure erected in Rome’s Campus Martius in honour of the emperor Augustus and dedicated on Jan. 30, 9 BCE. (x)

Getting caught in the corner of someone’s eye is such an embrace, holding the same vision as them is such an embrace

[transcript: 1. “any fear, any memory will do; and if you’ve got a heart at all, someday it will kill you.”

2. “survive what? you said. in the weak light you looked over your shoulder. you said, nothing ever survives.”

3. “because you want to die for love, you always have.”

4. “jesus: you think suffering is a one-way street?! it’s not! it’s the exact opposite of not!

judas: you got a lot of fuckin’ nerve—

jesus: —and you’ve got no nerve at all! where’s your heart in all this, judas? you think you were with me for any other reason than that?! it was your heart, judas. you were all heart. you were my heart! don’t you know that?!”

5. “he thought about wanting to feel like he had been made for something other than dying.”/end transcript]

rita dove, primer for a nuclear age/margaret atwood, roominghouse, winter/richard siken, planet of love/stephen adly guirgis, the last days of judas iscariot/maggie stiefvater- mister impossible

sometimes it’s easier said than done than to not want to change, but change does happen, be it within or beyond our will, but change does happen and it hits you like a bullet before you even have the time to prepare yourself for the run. So I’m just here to tell you that it’s okau to admit that you’re hurt and that this pain won’t subside just that easily, that it’s gonna show every morning you wake up and it’s gonna burn every few times you take a shower. That’s what it means to acknowledge it. That’s what it means to accept the very state of your being, and that’s what it requires to patch yourself up, to heal :) so the next time somebody asks you “are you going to change?” breathe in and say “am I going to change? I can’t tell, but I’m going to accept myself”

“God, if you’re a thing with ears: please, please.”

Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

Richard Siken, War Of The Foxes

Christian Wiman, More Like The Stars

Never mind. I invented you. I invented you, as far as my purposes go. I invented loving you and I invented your death. I have my tricks and my trap doors, too.

Alice Munro, from Collected Stories; “Tell me Yes or No,”

Marina Tsvetaeva, tr. by Elaine Feinstein from, “I’m glad your sickness.”

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis

“(…) and then there’s the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore.”

Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things; The Quiet Machine

H.D., The Look-Out

Akosua Afiriyie-Hwedie, In My Version

Lucille Clifton, The Death of Crazy Horse

repetition in poetry // part v

(part i) (part ii) (part iii) (part iv)

You’re going to reach a point where you look at a person and you can tell what all has changed ever since the last time the two of you spoke, you’re going to realise that they have new hobbies and gifts and interests, maybe even people, encompassing them, and you’re not a part of it. This is your strike to pick up on the fact that you’ve walked through the times you knew you couldn’t have passed considering the emotional barrier tugging at your wrists like restraints, you’re going to look at those hands and realise that pressing onto the palms of your memories doesn’t sting as much anymore, the shade of your skin has risen again, dancing in your embrace like velvet sheets that lay beneath :)

maybe this isn’t the time for you to hold a hand, maybe this is the time for you to reach down your pocket and find the Candy you were supposed to have a week ago and laugh to yourself. You have a life, and you’re living it. The departure of a person does not stop that, and it was never about the pace was it? you’re living proof of that. To remember and to savour the very last thought of a person is human nature, not a weakness.

just found out that “wish you were here” in persian is ‘jāy-e shomā khālīst’ which means “your place is empty” and it felt like being stabbed in the heart 37 times

Growth is constant. Always and forever, even when you feel like you’ve done nothing productive throughout your day, even when you feel like you’ve come to a stop, even when you feel like you haven’t moved past a point in what seems like ages, even when you feel like you aren’t over the loss of a figure, even when you feel like you can no longer feel yourself anymore. My precious reader, I hope you understand just how much courage it takes to come to terms with the mere fact of not having done anything today. Admitting it to yourself is far more than enough. You are breathing, growing and you are constantly giving every living second of your life. You are reciprocating emotions, you are finding a way through your thoughts to draw this very conclusion, you are processing so many different interactions through the span of the past few hours, yet being able to continue to communicate, Respect that.

I always love coming back here because every other social media platform is too loud