being alive is to have life telling you ‘ok now i will ask you to be brave. now i will ask you to be brave. now i will ask you to be brave’ over and over and over until you learn it & then have to learn it again

“Once you start to speak of things that are precious, you are immediately anxious about how people will react to what you have said, and you want to protect these things, to defend them against incomprehension.“”

— Andrei Tarkovsky, from “Scenario and shooting script,” Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (University of Texas Press, 1987)

“Start by pulling him out of the fire and hoping that he will forget the smell. He was supposed to be an angel but they took him from that light and turned him into something hungry, something that forgets what his hands are for when they aren’t shaking. He will lose so much, and you will watch it all happen because you had him first, and you would let the world break its own neck if it means keeping him. Start by wiping the blood off of his chin and pretending to understand. Repeat to yourself “I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you” until you fall asleep and dream of the place where nothing is red. When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep. Here are your upturned hands. Give them to him and watch how he prays like he is learning his first words. Start by pulling him out of another fire, and putting him back together with the pieces you find on the floor. There is so much to forgive, but you do not know how to forget. When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled. Here is your humble offering, obliterated and broken in the mouth of this abandoned church. He has come back to stop the world from turning itself inside out, and you love him, you do, so you won’t let him. Tell him that you will never know any better. Pretend to understand why that isn’t good enough.”

— Caitlyn Siehl, “Start Here”

-Girl with a Mirror-

"Growing Around Grief"

Lois Tonkin, 1996

fatima aamer bilal, from i mother it the absence of her, iii. i am not a person that can be loved for a very long time excerpt from moony moonless sky.

some days im mothering the child within me who never got her words of comfort

you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine

i say to her, hugging her knees, 

it’s going to be okay, you’ll make it, you’ll be fine

i feel like there's a point being the oldest sibling where you stop being your parents' child and start being just some person who happens to live in the house

Franz Kafka, letter to his father

being touch-starved [mother issues] and being touch-repulsed [father issues] at the same time

source / em berry

having a uterus SUCKS man bc all day you'll be feeling the "hey bestie check your pants 😃 check it right now 😃 you might be getting your period 😃 hey bestie i think youre bleeding 😃" and then when you check if you got your period and your body is like WRONG ❌️ its The Slime

vintage cherub trinket box