“In my kindergarten art class, sunlight dripped through fingerpaint-covered windows. I learnt the primaries: red, blue, yellow. I could make the whole rainbow out of three colours. I was older when I started telling myself that I only looked at the female anatomical models for reference. I had so much experience dressing quickly and keeping my eyes on the ground in the locker room, but this girl made me understand why they say “pretty as a painting”. You can’t touch museum art. We have the same lotion. It smells better on her, it makes me think of cookies and old Paris cafés where the great painters had lunch. The colour palette I bring from home is so dark, but she makes me lean towards romantiscism. I can’t draw a straight line anymore but it’s okay; her hair is naturally curly. A boy called her weird yesterday, and I wanted to tell her that I have spent hours practicing shading to recreate the light in her eyes, but that would make it obvious I’d been staring. You’re not supposed to look at your friends like that. Our teacher says the colourmaker Diesbach tried to make a perfect red and created ultramarine. In a time when ultramarine paint was worth more than gold he added animal blood to his flask and out burst blue, worth more than gold! I wanted vermilion like Romeo, ruby as sunset, flash lipstick, scarlet forget-me-not kisses, I would give blood to my brush for her to blush at me in that shade I would take cobalt as a new sky, azure as cornflower, schoolgirl skirt navy hiding held hands or even yellow sunflower petals. Dutch painters whispering “she loves me… she loves me… she loves me…" Our teacher didn’t tell us that the creation of prussian blue led to the isolation of cyanide. I can’t breathe without turning into poison, it’s apple seeds and seeping through junior-high gym floorboards when you watch your best friend dance with boys who will never be you! I always liked friendship bracelets more than promise rings. My middle-school diaries are filled with girls, like a pick-pocket sketching the Hope Diamond. I’d be lining my coat with stolen glances. I don’t have a partner in crime to keep me warm. I know the signs. The teacher’s assistant, a nice junior who comes to school with cherry eyes every time her lab partner gets a new boyfriend. Throw over your men! My history professor and her roommate of 15 years. I say someone in another time will remember us. I want to be five years old mixing all the colours until i get the drark brown of her Monet shoulder freckles, and you give a Valentine to everyone in class.”

—

“Art Class”, by Rhiannon McGavin

The above was my attempt to transcribe this video of thegeekyblonde performing her poem at at Brave New Voices. It’s stellar, it gives me chills every time. 

(She’s getting choked up during the whole video so it was bit of a challenge to transcribe it. If you want to offer corrections or fill in the things I missed, please do.)

“Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart.”

— Winnie the Pooh

“Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.”

— Winnie The Pooh

“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”

— Alan Watts

They say "time heals", but even now ... I know that's a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you'll get used to the pain. You'll forget who you were without it; you'll forget what you looked like without your scars.

— Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You

“i realize now, that loving him was neither beautiful nor poetic; it was knowingly walking through hell every day and losing myself there.”

- a.m. {trying to love someone who is too broken to be fixed}

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.

— Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“You don’t always realize it, but sometimes you aren’t in love with a person. You’re in love with the way they make you feel. That’s what makes it difficult when they leave. You begin to miss the way you felt, as if nobody could make you feel that way again.”

— ekta somera

“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”

—

Winnie the Pooh

I don't know if I can call this love.

What I do know is that my mind
is a freeway that is too familiar
with rush hour and thinks bumper-
to-bumper traffic is normal.

However, she makes everything
feel like midnight.

The streets are empty and her car
is the only one on the road.

Rudy Francisco

I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to.

rudy francisco

i loved you. i’ve loved you forever. i forgave you no matter what you did. i promised myself you changed and that the blood underneath your nails was just yours and not innocent victims. that you were different. i convinced myself that my love could save you and turn you into an angel but i was wrong. i’m always fucking wrong.

“my body is a stranger i keep meeting over and over again.”

— rudy francisco, ouch

There was a moment in my life

when I couldn’t tell the difference

between a window and a mirror.

I could look into both

and see everything

but myself.

- Windows and Mirrors

“Helium” by Rudy Francisco

“If I had a nickel for every time I stayed up too late for someone who would never wake up for me… a penny for every time I had to bend and stretch to prove to someone that I am here, that I exist, my heart would rattle and shake with all of the coins spilling back into it.”

— Melissa Lozado-Olivia, If I Got Paid For All My Emotional Labor

“I know you are the one because my heart and my brain feel the same about you”

—

“You have brought me far enough from my fears that the only fear i have now is losing you.”

—