109moons

[109moons]

i understand that what other people do with their bodies is none of my business. but my father is still alive because of an organ donor, and i just think it’s very, very weird when people get defensive over body parts they won’t even be using anymore.

[109moons]

Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole”, On Being with Krista Tippett

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Leila Chatti, “Tea”

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rositooth

[109moons]

Grief is weird. There is no more poetic way to say it. I believe that grief plants roots deep in a crevice in your abdomen and the tendrils grow into every surface of your life. Grief warps the mirror in front of you and puts dark colored glasses in front of your eyes. Grief is always in your peripheral vision. One minute you are staring at a computer screen at work, and you blink and catch a glimpse the corner of the sleeve of a button down shirt you recognize. You grow around the roots grief leaves. Grief makes room for you. Grief does not want to take over your life, it wants you to know it is there. Sometimes the roots grief takes, are the roots that hold you together. They say the ones we lose are never lost. I believe this in all of the small moments during the day that no one but you and your ghost can see. Today, I closed my eyes in the office, a space my Dad never occupied, and there he was. It was 2017. My Dad didn’t know he had cancer yet. I didn’t know my liver had already started failing. We had waited until the last minute to prep for Hurricane Irma and were walking around the Winn-Dixie in Lutz in a Hail Mary to find some water while laughing at the hysterical non-natives stocking up on toilet paper. It is a simple memory. I do not remember much of what we were talking about. I just recall so vividly turning to look over and up at my Father, and filling with absolute contentment. Nothing bad could happen from the hurricane. My Dad was there. We would play cards with flashlights on like we always did. He’d probably let me win at monopoly. That memory comes and goes in a flash, and I’m back at my desk - my Dad is still gone, and he was never able to see what I was making of my life now. The memory is a root. It keeps him here. Grief is the weight that holds the memories of our loved ones. Grief is the flowers blossoming on a tree. Maybe grief is a sparkling light in the night sky, or a rolling wave on your favorite beach. Grief is in motion and static. Grief is the greatest gift we can be given with our mortality.

[109moons]

Anthony Thomas Lombardi, from "self-portrait as murmuration"

[109moons]

Louise Glück, from “Otis”, Poems 1962 - 2012

[109moons]

Emily Dickinson, "If I can stop one heart from breaking" // Disney, Lilo and Stitch // Becks_RyLynn on ao3, "How the Light Gets In" // Jessica Darrow—Surface Pressure // The Hunger Games (2012) // The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) // Lin Manuel-Miranda—The Reynold's Pamphlet // @throwitinthelake 's tags on this post // @lucidloving // see 2

[109moons]

eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.

[109moons]

Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

[109moons]

Thank god you are finally gone.

[109moons]

Kate Baer, from And Yet: Poems; “40”

[Text ID: “because sometimes it is easier to / write yourself out of the play / than to face another breakfast.”]

[109moons]

Leila Chatti, Night Lament in Hergla 

[109moons]

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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“It’s true I hate the stories about the other women, but I love the description of their daily lives, like the scene with twelve raspberry cakes in a French café, or the drunkard asking for the way. A bottle of whiskey on a heavy walnut table, my husband’s hands on a glass. No one’s muses are believable, said the painter whom I loved for twelve weeks and who would rarely touch me. To him, the female body was a plant: it needed to be tended and spoken to, but too much warmth would spoil the matter. In his paintings that I like best, women wander through cities and notice objects. Lanterns. Hats they can’t afford. Little glasses of Pernod. I loved him to hurt the other one, whom I loved more. And so, most of my life, it passes like this: light touching my skin, lying on the floor among my diaries, writing of him–– What did Proust say, months before he passed away? I have great news. Last night, I wrote “The End,” so now I can die. Oh! Had I known the boredom that my talents had in store for me, I would still have asked for them.”

— “Zelda Fitzgerald,” by Aria Aber | The New Yorker