rachel corrie’s letters

Don’t Look Away, by Selma Dabbagh as featured in the London Review of Books

So, just trying to figure out how to use tumblr. Here, have a poem

My mother cries over the body of her living son. She cries while i stand before her, She shouts ‘you are gone’, But i’m right here?

She speaks of a little girl, Of fond memories and family holidays, But i do not remember her. I remember him,  I remember me.

She says i am five, But i amsixteen. She tells me she loves me and she will never stop loving me, But she tells me i'm a murderer  

I am the man, the boy, who took away her daughter, I killed her, I erased her,  I left her behind.

I tell my mom ‘she’ is not gone, That he is here, That he has always been,  That he never left, That he would never leave.

She sighs. She says i am five, But I am nineteen.

Carrie Fountain, from "Late Spring in the Mesilla Valley", Burn Lake

Lakota Nation vs. United States (Jesse Short Bull & Laura Tomaselli, 2022)

Could you do one about healing?🌻

susan abulhawa against the loveless world: a novel (via @feral-ballad) \\ mary oliver blue horses: "the fourth sign of the zodiac" (via @liriostigre) \\ @8essalonikh \\ @/isabelunraveled (link to her substack) \\ @softsweetwhispers \\ michael dumanis creature (via @geryone)

kofi

This could be my last report from Gaza by Tareq S. Hajjaj. Please read.

Having an older sister goes like this

I love you. I’m glad you went through everything first. I’m sorry you had to. I love you more than mom. I love her more than our father. We’ve lived through the same things but it doesn’t hurt you the same; I wish you understood my rage. I love you. I’d take a bullet for you. I wish you’d live for me. I think you really need to see a therapist. I love you. I’m sorry I’m hard to live with. I love you. I wish you separated the laundry by colors instead of putting everything together in the washing machine. No one understands me like you do. I love you. I’ll argue with our father so you don’t have to. I know you hate conflict. I love you. You were the first person to use my name. I love you. I wish you were okay. You always stay on your phone so I have to clean the table, and nothing annoys me more than that. You sit and listen to my clumsy explanations for forgotten chores and the way my brain functions. No one else does. I’m so glad I live with you. I love you. Thank you for letting me stay in your room when the parents fought when we were kids. I love you. I could probably live without you. Your name has been in all of my passwords for ever. All the other passwords in our family are your birthdate. I love you. I like the way you don’t touch me when I don’t want you to; I like the way you tell me no when I ask for hugs sometimes. Forehead kisses are our things, please don’t forget. I love you. You don’t listen to my dreams anymore but I wish you did. I love you. You accept all of my truths without flinching. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

when georges bataille wrote, “no greater desire exists than a wounded person’s need for another wound” & when gillian flynn wrote, “a child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort” & when ocean vuong wrote, “sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined” & when lisa m. basile wrote, “did you inherit a sickness? did you blame god? do you believe in god? do you believe in yourself? are you still on fire? did you ever put out the fire?” & when stephen a. guirgis wrote, “why didn't you make me good enough so that you could’ve loved me?”

hi hello hi i love love love your ability to weave narratives through different media u are a gift to tumblr dot com ,,,.,. if i may ask, do u have any webweaves on loneliness and feeling detached from relationships/friendships?

fiona apple \\ via @thischarmingcharlie \\ @richardsikenpdfd-archiv-deactiv \\ ruprecht von kaufmann einsamkeit (2018) \\ via @doubleedgedhead \\ richard jackson basic algebra (via @stryckerlancer) \\ kaveh akbar calling a wolf a wolf: Poems: “unburnable the cold is flooding our lives" (via @feral-ballad) \\ liana finck \\ sally rooney conversations with friends (via @typewriter-worries) \\ musubi hagi

kofi

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

what do you mean i have to confess my poetic love for you? what do you mean you didn't see me suffering while i was sitting through a storm thinking of dancing with you in it? what do you mean you wouldn't slow dance with me in a burning room? what do you mean you didn't see my nervousness when i typed "i think of you so often, i wish to worship you like you're my goddess." but i backspaced it. what do you mean we cannot kiss until we dissolve into each other? what do you mean you wouldn't get a single hint of how obsessed i am with you, i find your eyes through the crowd, i can sense your presence before you enter a room, i know you deeper than the person you sit with.

I am my mother’s son, and as such :

I watch her devote her life to giving, so hard, so often, so easily. I wonder if her mother was the same.

I am my mother’s son, and as such, all I know to do it give. It’s coincidences after coincidences and statistics will tell you what I know best: people like me are more susceptible to be victims of depression, abuse, comorbidities. Because I turned out pretty okay, except for the anxiety that’s not even that bad if I compare it, and the daddy issues that don’t matter, and the physical disabilities that would disappear with a little bit of exercise, I give because I have something to give. And when I don’t have anything to give anymore, I give anyway. If not me, who else ? No one gives to me: how can I be sure they have someone else ? They don’t. They told me they don’t. So I give and I give and I give even if I can’t breath anymore and there’s a puddle of resentment forming at the very bottom of my stomach.

I am my mother’s son. Our lives only have value as long as we have something to give.

Longing for the day I meet someone

I don't have to give to.

(I was made for it. I

Was made for it. I was

Made for it.)

@sketiana on tumblr // Clementine Von Radics, James // Nicole Homer, Underbelly // unknown // Taylor Swift, You're On Your Own Kid // Speeches for Dr Frankenstein, Margaret Atwood // Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems; “In a dream”

in your 20s you must rediscover the joys of arts and crafts to stave off spiritual decay