sylviaplathadoptmepls

[sylviaplathadoptmepls]

"I love you , I'm glad we're friends"

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On Love and Community

@princes-heels // ? // @inkskinned // mitski, my love mine all mine//@littlespoonsokka // @boymiffy // @2aminhouston // ? // @theviralwitch // @noodle // @criterioncollectiongirl // @fatsoupy // ? // @mjalti // george saunders, congratulations, by the way// @jb-blunk // @ponchopeligroso // @headspace-hotel // everything, everywhere, all at once(2022) //@cheruib // ? // ? // @tordenvejr

[sylviaplathadoptmepls]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[sylviaplathadoptmepls]

I really thought grief was just a constant state of catatonia but I’m entirely wrong bc you feel like you’re normal and okay for maybe most of the day but then it creeps up on you again and chokes you all out of nowhere and then you rebound and feel okay again and then there it is creeping up on you again and it literally never ends it’s like motion sickness

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Leila Chatti, "Postcard from Gone"

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Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

by Amiri Baraka

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way The ground opens up and envelopes me Each time I go out to walk the dog. Or the broad edged silly music the wind Makes when I run for a bus… Things have come to that. And now, each night I count the stars. And each night I get the same number. And when they will not come to be counted, I count the holes they leave. Nobody sings anymore. And then last night I tiptoed up To my daughter’s room and heard her Talking to someone, and when I opened The door, there was no one there… Only she on her knees, peeking into Her own clasped hands.

[sylviaplathadoptmepls]

The Loneliest Job in the World

by Tony Hoagland

As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me? you are completely screwed, because the next question is How Much?

and then it is hundreds of hours later, and you are still hunched over your flowcharts and abacus,

trying to decide if you have gotten enough. This is the loneliest job in the world: to be an accountant of the heart.

It is late at night. You are by yourself, and all around you, you can hear the sounds of people moving

in and out of love, pushing the turnstiles, putting their coins in the slots,

paying the price which is asked, which constantly changes. No one knows why.

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“We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light.”

— Hildegard von Bingen, from ‘Selected Writings’ (via wraith-lace)

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—Mary Oliver, The Uses of Sorrow

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But I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.

Tippett: And then you talk about growing up in a sad, depressed place, a difficult place. You don’t belabor this, I mean, and in other places — there’s a place you talk about you were one of many thousands who’ve had insufficient childhoods, but that you spent a lot of your time walking around the woods in Ohio.

Oliver: Yes, I did, and I think it saved my life. To this day, I don’t care for the enclosure of buildings. It was a very bad childhood — for everybody, every member of the household, not just myself, I think — and I escaped it, barely, with years of trouble. But I did find the entire world, in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.

— Mary Oliver, from "I Got Saved by the Beauty of the World" in "On Being Interview with Krista Tippett" (Feb 15 2015)

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What Sex Becomes

by Olivia Gatwood

I remember being a waitress on Valentine’s Day and loving the newness on a couple’s face,

how I watched, like the only patron at a matinee, as they shared everything they ate.

I would deliver their sundae with an extra cherry – the one she would slide into her mouth – a preview of what was to come.

I felt like a school teacher who goes home to no children, a cab driver without a car,

a therapist who cries in the middle of the night and can’t figure out why.

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Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

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Having to live a future you didn’t think you’d be alive for is so fucking hard

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"You survive this and in some terrible way, which I suppose no one can ever describe, you are compelled, you are corralled, you are bullwhipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you. And what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, that is not what’s important. Everybody’s hurt. What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. This is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less."

- James Baldwin, The Artist's Struggle for Integrity

[sylviaplathadoptmepls]

obsessed where stories where it is like. the mistakes are unfixable and the worst thing that could happen happened and nothing can go back to how it was. but there was still love in this and love will continue after this and love endures always.

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Straw House, Straw Dog - Richard Siken

1 I watched TV. I had a Coke at the bar. I had four dreams in a row where you were burned, about to burn, or still on fire. I watched TV. I had a Coke at the bar. I had four Cokes, four dreams in a row. Here you are in the straw house, feeding the straw dog. Here you are in the wrong house, feeding the wrong dog. I had a Coke with ice. I had four dreams on TV. You have a cold cold smile. You were burned, you were about to burn, you’re still on fire. Here you are in the straw house, feeding ice to the dog, and you wanted and adventure, so I said Have an adventure. The straw about to burn, the straw on fire. Here you are on the TV, saying Watch me, just watch me. 2 Four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row, fall down right there. I wanted to fall down right there but I knew you wouldn’t catch me because you’re dead. I swallowed crushed ice pretending it was glass and you’re dead. Ashes to ashes. You wanted to be cremated so we cremated you and you wanted an adventure so I ran and I knew you wouldn’t catch me. You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel. 3 I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything. And I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t sit still or fix things and I wake up and I wake up and you’re still dead, you’re under the table, you’re still feeding the damn dog, you’re cutting the room in half. Whatever. Feed him whatever. Burn the straw house down. 4 I don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back. So, I said, now that we have our dead, what are we going to do with them? There’s a black dog and there’s a white dog, depends on which you feed, depends on which damn dog you live with. 5 Here we are in the wrong tunnel, burn O burn, but it’s cold, I have clothes all over my body, and it’s raining, it wasn’t supposed to. And there’s snow on the TV, a landscape full of snow, falling down from the fire-colored sky. But thanks, thanks for calling it the blue sky. You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that. I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that. You weren’t supposed to.