Margaret Atwood

I fear I will go my whole life without connecting with another human being. I stare into your eyes and see only my own reflection. Where is your soul? They promised me these were the windows. I spend my days tapping coded messages on a one way mirror.

—A.B.

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.”

—Charles Bukowski

“And above all a great shame, not only at being me, but, simply, of being. Shame of living or dying. I will also be ashamed when I die.”

—Alejandra Pizarnik

“I fall asleep whispering “I am safer alone I am safer alone I am safer alone I am safer alone" […] Forgive me, memory is a rope around the neck.”

— Clementine von Radics, from James (via unpetalled)

I don’t fight for myself. I never have. I take all the hurt and I tuck it away inside, hoarding it beneath my skin like one day I’ll be able to pull it out, examine it, find a reason.

Everything I’ve ever swallowed has only made me more hollow.

—A.B.

My tongue is cruel. It’s ignorant. I can think the gentlest, most lovely things. When I open my mouth to say them, they transform into something harsh and bitter. I am compelled to perform any kindness in silence.

—Avery Black

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

Carl Phillips, from “Civilization”, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020

I can’t explain the feeling when someone disappoints me. There’s an ache—in my stomach, the back of my throat, behind my eyes. But there’s warmth too, a sense of satisfaction. Something in me whispers this is right. this is all that could ever be.

—Avery Black

I try to explain womanhood to a man. I tell him about being hunted, and he asks what happens when they catch you. “You embrace him,” I say. “You call him father, lover, friend. You try to remind him that, once, you were more than prey.”

—Avery Black

“You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“I thought, “As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be all right. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes.”

—Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human

BEE LB, from "friction polish"