“I am not actually tired, but numb and heavy, and can’t find the right words. All I can say is: Stay with me, don’t leave me.”

— Franz Kafka, from “Letters to Felice.”

No, I don’t care that you’re messy and loud and sometimes annoying. I love you anyhow. Come over tonight. I will cook for you in the kitchen—it’s green tiles and the sun that peaks in through the windows. Come as you are. Leave your hair messy and your skin blank and your body cloaked in plain clothing. I find you most beautiful in that state—natural, beating, tender, alive. I will make us soup in my cleanest pot. It will be steaming and hot, but not too hot that it burns. I will love you enough for it to always keep you warm, but never in such a way that it hurts.

Teacher, they said to Jesus, The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? —John 8:5 You know how it is when your speeding car spins on the ice at night and you think here it is? When the deer spring across the headlights? When you begin to slip down the steep and icy steps? Now imagine someone is about to push you, someone you know and then they don’t.

Marie Howe, "Magdalene: The Woman Taken in Adultery," from Magdalene: Poems

Hypervigilance and Paranoia; I wish I could blink.

Not Even This by Ocean Vuong | Skinny Dipping by Ocean Vuong | Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher | Courtney Love Prays To Oregon by Clementine Von Radics | Francis Bacon's Last Interview by Francis Giacobetti | Angry Chair by Alice in Chains | Waiting by Marya Hornbacher | The Truth About Grief by Fortesa Latifi | Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey | If My Body Could Speak by Blythe Baird | Every Day I Am Trying New Techniques To Make Myself Disappear by E. E. Scott | via @yellowplumfruit | Questions for Ada by Ijeoma Umebinyuo | Intimacy by Marge Piercy | The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood | Letter to Violet Dickinson by Virginia Woolf | It’s Sunday Morning in Early November by Philip Schultz | Kait Rokowski

I am doing my best to not become a museum of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.

I am begging: 𝘓𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦.

Natalie Díaz, Postcolonial Love Poem

“I’m searching for a phrase that will release everything that’s pent up in me.”

— Henry Miller, in a letter to Anaïs Nin, featured in A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953.

— César Vallejo, from The Selected Writings; “Abraham Valdelomar Has Died.”

[Text ID: And I shall see you again and wrap my arms around you, like always, with all my soul, with all my heart.]

Sometimes, I cry so hard I can feel it in my ribs. / I feel like the real me is backed into a corner inside me

— Ama Asantewa Diaka, from "Saturday Evening WhatsApp Message," Woman, Eat Me Whole

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a letter to Arthur Davison Ficke featured in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

— Louise Glück, from “The Untrustworthy Speaker.”

Free Palestine Reading List

Haymarket Books: Free Ebooks for a Free Palestine!

Verso Books: Solidarity with Palestine: Free Resources and Further Reading

OR Books: THE FREE PALESTINE READING LIST

City Lights Books: Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha

Something in me wants more. I can't rest.

— Sylvia Plath, from “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.”

“To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”

— Sylvia Plath, from “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.”

— Lord Byron, from “To the Countess of Blessington.”

— Hélène Cixous, from “Hyperdream.”