Anna Akhmatova, Tr. By Lenore Mayhew And William Mcnaughton, From Poem Without A Hero And Selected Poems;

James Baldwin, from If Beale Street Could Talk Florence and the Machine, from Various Storms & Saints Simone de Beauvoir, from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

Heart imagery by Andrea Zanatelli Eye with Tear (oil paint and resin tear on canvas) by Nancy Fouts Douleur d'amour (detail) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

“Accept this love I ask for. Accept the part of me that is you.”

Alejandra Pizarnik, from ‘On Your Anniversary’

“I am in your words, I know, as you are in all of mine.”

Edmond Jabés, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Book

“What I am giving you is nothing that belongs to me […] It is just yourself, you running through me throwing off sparks, your eyes blazing with fear, blazing with hope, I am giving you your own fire. All I do is breathe very gently on your night embers and handfuls of stars fly out.”

Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea

“losing through you what seemed myself, i find selves unimaginably mine”

e.e. cummings,  ‘silently if,out of not knowable’

 “He is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and we were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

“When you seem to be listening to my words, they seem to be your words, with me listening.”

Antonio Porchia, Voices

“No, Hans, my love, I am not as generous as you think nor do I give myself to you freely–whatever you take from me you have already given me […] When I think of you, when I give myself to you, I feel I am going to meet myself, and this makes me stronger and more serene.. what a selfish kind of generosity!”

Andres Neuman, Traveller of the Century

“I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections, And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I met myself in you.”

Adonis, ‘Transormations of the Lover’

“& my body is a wall so thin you could miss it so wide it cuts the world in half & out the light you stumble touch yourself gently & enough.”

— Danez Smith, from “For the Dead Homie,” published in The Fight and the Fiddle (via lifeinpoetry)

and the bitterness in goodbye

do you ever think about this quote by mary lambert because i think about it all the time

Elaine Castillo, America Is Not The Heart Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Ijeoma Umebinyuo, ‘Confessions’, Questions for Ada Mohamad Hafez, Baggage series Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited Anne Carson, ‘The Glass Essay’, Glass, Irony, and God Margaret Atwood, ‘November’, You Are Happy Richard Siken, ‘Boot Theory’, Crush

This is why some of us wake up          in the middle of night looking for saint—                    and maybe your saint is the moon, or maybe your phone, or maybe          it’s that moment you walk out the door                    to look up at the stars just to prove to the heavens you’re still alive.

— Kelli Russell Agodon, from “I Don’t Own Anxiety, But I Borrow It Regularly,” published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Leila Chatti, Postcard from Gone

“I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof. […] Love ends. But what if it doesn’t?”

— Ada Limon, from “The Hurting Kind,” The Hurting Kind: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022)

i want to fill my mouth with your name

Pablo Neruda, Katrien De Blauwer, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Ashley Walters, Erika Meitner, Katrien De Blauwer, Ocean Vuong, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz

buy me a coffee