original art, photography, and writing by @adirabennett
Tag: words
“Well, of course I’ve tried lavender. And pulling my memory out, ribbonlike and dripping. And shrieking into my pillow. And writing the poems. And making more friends. And baking warm brown cookies. And therapy. And intimacy. And pictures of rainbows. And all of the movies about lovers and the terrible things they do to each other. And watching the ones in other languages. And leaving the subtitles off. And listening to the language. And forgetting my name. And feeling the dirt on my skin. And screaming in the shower. And changing my shampoo. And living alone. And cutting my hair. And buying a turtle. And petting the cat. And traveling. And writing more poems. And touching a different body. And digging a grave. And digging a grave. Of course, I’ve tried it. Of course I have.”
— september is a weary month, yasmin belkhyr (via wildflowerveins)
THE GAY DANCE FLOOR, a composite blackout poem of three Washington Post articles on the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, for the first anniversary of the event, by Keaton St. James
“then, we became the wound pleading for the dead. / the first moments were filled with dark. it’s totally different now. we’re all still grieving but underground the 49 names of the dead asked us / for real healing. so we returned to the gay dance floor, leaving candles and flowers for them.”
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“Regenerative experiences: Plunge into the sea.
The sun.
An old city.
Silence.”— Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Writing is a case of letting writing do what it wants. It’s knowing and not knowing what you’re going to write, not believing that you know the answer, and being afraid.”
— Marguerite Duras, from an interview conducted c. December 1967
“She’s listening to this: this transformation in herself. Which is still new, mobile, momentary.
She doesn’t know who, shortly, she’ll be.”— Hélène Cixous, from Stigmata: Escaping Texts; “Bathsheba, Interior Bible,”
“One weapon was left to me: my pen, my honesty, and my passionate conviction.”
— Boris Pasternak, from a diary entry written c. November 1927
when simone de beauvoir said “i’m reliving it, neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that i can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it. that’s not easy. it’s at once painful and poetic.”
“I’m not the person you left behind anymore. There’s no one here to miss.”
— Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
Water Witches 