—Yiwei Chai, The Jacaranda Years

intangible - madisen kuhn

I leave, I leave— At the end of this story, I walk into the sea and it chooses not to drown me.

— Jihyun Yun, from "The Leaving Season," Some Are Always Hungry

kaveh akbar, 'calling a wolf a wolf' // doc luben, 'love letters or suicide notes' // @/nutnoce, tumblr // 'my body's made of crushed little stars', mitski // @/ojibwa, tumblr // 'spring', mary oliver

Them: you should have sex at least once just to try it

Me, the asexual: would you have sex with someone you weren’t attracted to?

Them: ew no

Me: me either

Them: but you should at least try it!

Me:

Frank Bidart, from Half-light: Collected Poems; "End of a Friendship" // Marya Hornbacher, Waiting //  Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada // Rita Dove, from "November for Beginners"

We trick ourselves into mediocrity and we rarely notice it.

Subconscious Thoughts

“You say you live in pain. Let it be the pain of the death of the old false self, and the life-movement of the new real truthful self. We are all wrapped in silky layers of illusion which we instinctively feel to be necessary to our existence. Often these illusions are harmless, in the sense that we can still go on being reasonably good and reasonably happy. Sometimes, because of a catastrophe, a bereavement or some total loss of self-esteem, our falsehoods become pernicious, and we are forced to choose between some painful recognition of truth and an ever more frenzied manufacturing of lies. Live at peace with despair. Live quietly with your sense of guilt. Sit beside it, as it were, and regard the frightful wound to your self-esteem as the removal of deep illusions which existed before and which this chance has torn. If you keep checking any lie and resisting the anger which deforms the world, you will gradually realise that the poor old wounded self, with its furious whining and its hatred of itself and everything else, is not you at all. That self is dying, but another self is watching it die.”

— Iris Murdoch

breaking news: ur actually gonna make it through and everything will turn out just fine

mom can you come get me things are getting bad again and i feel every insult like a sharp tooth and i feel my dreams rotting under my fingernails and i feel too much all the time or else i feel nothing at all and it doesn’t seem to matter if i drink and dance and party or if i stay at home curled up to study

mom are you sure when i was born i was a person and not just a vortex. always hungry. always swallowing. no matter how much goes in me i always end up empty.