BELLADONNA-n. | "In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues."
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.
"pyrrhic"
— (adjective) | As one of the 100 most beautiful words in the English lexicon, pyrrhic possesses the most bittersweet connotation. Defined as a type of success marked by the sign of multiple heavy losses, a pyrrhic victory weighs greater than any achievement due to the difficulties one endured. Although you have met your triumph, it is difficult to obtain a sense of accomplishment.
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- Spoiler:
“no one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth.”
— TÉ V. SMITH, RELEASING & RECEIVING
"Acceptance. I finally
reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircse.
I have lost you."
-Linda Pastan, from “The Five Stages of Grief”
“None of us move on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
“There is a pronounced difference between sadness and grief. Sadness is transient, usually rooted in some perceivable event or incident; grief is multi-pronged, runs in every direction and the locus of trauma is usually invisible or imperceptible.”
― SCHEREZADE SIOBHAN
"You will always remember what you were doing / when it hurt the most."
-Ocean Vuong, from “Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown)
"When you return to something you love, it’s already beyond repair.
You wear it broken."
-James L. White, from “Lying in Sadness”
"… no one wants to hear you
can’t hold on to anything without tearing it apart,
that everyone you love is a stranger to someone
who’s a stranger to you, and sometimes who you love
is a stranger, too."
― ANNELYSE GELMAN
“Sometimes, you just want
something so hard you have to lie about it,
so you can hold it in your mouth for a minute,
how real hunger has a real taste.”
― ADA LIMÓN
“I wanted it to be beautiful, I wanted it to be a kingdom without pain, and now it is on fire.”
— CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
"When will I stop belonging
to this hungry thing inside me?"
-Clementine von Radics, from “The Spring Everything Grew Wild and the Rain Came Down Like Punishment,” Mouthful of Forevers
"There’s enough light to drown in
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay."
- Ocean Vuong, “DetoNation,”
"We have not touched the stars
nor are we forgiven."
― RICHARD SIKEN
"I said, this is my penance.
This is my absolution.
I would carve his heart out again if I had to.
I would carve mine out with it too."
― VENETTA O
“What was she thinking? No actual thoughts, only feelings: mournfulness, woe, and, finally, a spark of defiant anger.”
― MARGARET ATWOOD
"You are like me, whether or not you admit it.
Unsatisfied, meticulous. And your hunger is not for experience but for understanding."
― LOUISE GLÜCK
“Do you know, Masha, how revelation comes? Like death. So sudden, though you knew all along it must occur. A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
"I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word."
-Ernest Hemingway
Alexander the Great cried and fell to his knees while burning down the city of Persepolis, but that never stopped him from lighting the matches. It never stopped his armies from destroying all there was of a beautiful empire. It never stopped the monuments from crumbling. Sometimes our pride speaks too loudly for us to hear our hearts, and this is what we are left with. A throne, with no city to rule.
-Y.Z, I should have called you Alex
"it’s paradise, but we can’t get out of it.
and anything you can’t get out of is hell."
― MARGARET ATWOOD
"sprezzatura”
— (noun) | An untranslatable Italian word, sprezzatura is defined as “a defensive irony.” It is a studied art of concealment, it is a way to mask your true desires, thoughts, and feelings. Along with the connotations of projecting an outward carelessness, comes the elegance of exuding grace under pressure.
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“I can be feminine in all my rage.
I can be girl and woman, and claws with teeth.
Watch me burn.”
– VENETTA OCTAVIA, PRELUDE TO LIGHT
Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary.
Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.
— DONNA TARTT
"I wish to show you the darkness you are so afraid of. Trust me. This darkness is a place you can enter and be as safe in as you are anywhere; you can put one foot in front of the other and believe the sides of your eyes. Memorize it. You will know it again in your own time. When the appearances of things have left you, you will still have this darkness. Something of your own you can carry with you."
— MARGARET ATWOOD
“And it was Death itself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tight as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I also felt a strange longing.”
― MARGARET ATWOOD
“It lives in me. You live in me. Malignant.”
― LOUISE GLUCK
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that. I have worn nothing but blood and death for years. I have fought all your battles for you, just as you asked me. I have learned all the tricks you said I must learn. I have learned not to cry when I strangle a man. I have learned to lay my finger aside my nose and disappear. I have learned to watch everything die. I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
"Oh, what a home I have
built in my skull. What a dark, savage
forest. There is no furniture, no artisan
humanity. No gentle place to undress
my own thoughts..."
― SIERRA DEMULDER
"so i go on and on and ignore my childhood and i love my sins
i keep them caged like quarantined pets, my little maimed birds
pull them out during the dark hours of the night and on
and on i go plucking the drab plumage from the puckered skin"
— JESSICA HELEN LOPEZ, “THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR ADDICTION"
“Yes, there is something uncanny, demonic and fascinating in her.”
— LEO TOLSTOY, ANNA KARENINA
“You know your former self like a tooth spinning in its own blood; its clawlike root is another weapon you’ve lost.”
— IAN KHADAN, “MOURNING THE LOST.”
"I should have a hell for my anger, a hell for my pride – a hell for every caress; a proper symphony of hells."
― ARTHUR RIMBAUD
“It was inside
you – entrance
to that cavern
deeper than hell,
more dark and lonely.”
― GREGORY ORR
“If you think I am not hungry anymore
Then you are very wrong
And I will eat and eat
And consume you”
― DOROTHEA LASKY
“KLYTAIMNESTRA : Don’t squawk at me. I am not some witless female.
I am fearless and you know it.
Whether you praise or blame me I don’t care.”
― AISKHYLOS
"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating"
― SYLVIA PLATH
“Yes, she’s electric and yes,
she’s a monster
at times.”
― MARY J bO BANG
“You think you are possessing me – / But I’ve got my teeth in you.”
― ANGELA CARTER
"What I mean is, I’m tired
of everything gorgeous. Of the burden
of burning. Of wondering
when. What I mean is, on some nights I miss you so much
that I never want to see you again."
― ALI SHAPIRO
“Maybe my heart was hungrier than this.”
-Jeannine Hall Gailey, “The Note the Fox-Wife Leaves Him,” from She Returns to the Floating World
“crepuscule”
— (noun) | Crepuscule is defined as the twilight or dusk of the day. As the most romantic and significant period of the day, it symbolizes the border between day and night. This period of partial darkness is the most breathtaking, extraterrestrial phenomenon human beings witness every day. Nevertheless, crepuscule is a metaphor for all borders in life: the haziness of the day, the day’s end, and the uncertainty of the upcoming night, as well as life.
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“I won’t lose my darkness. What else do I have.”
ALICE NOTLEY, 1965
"I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses."
― FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"I am sorry. I lost something there. Like a path I was walking that dead-ended, and now I am alone and lost in the forest, and I am here and I do not know where here is any more."
-Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
“I went looking for my life
in the woods like a bloodhound
you don’t know what it is to have a story
wrapped around you so tight”
― JENNIFER HANKS
“Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― RICHARD SIKEN
"When night comes, something speaks
from that soft, fragrant wilderness.
It says, the heart is not a door. But it opens.
We feel in the dark for the hinge."
-Carole Glasser Langille, from “Five Doors,” In Cannon Cave
"I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit."
-Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home
"I fell asleep in a river, I woke in a river,
of my mysterious
failure to die I can tell you
nothing, neither
who saved me nor for what cause—"
-Louise Glück, Landscape from Averno
I caution you as I was never cautioned:
you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.
Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth—
Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.
Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive."
-Louise Glück, from “The Sensual World”
"What I want to say, querido, is
hunger is not romantic to the hungry.
What I want to say is
fear is not so thrilling if you’re the one afraid."
-Sandra Cisneros, from Loose Woman
"It appears that we are doomed to go our separate ways, to continue in the darkness of our own making, half-blind, and no longer who we are."
-Karen Brennan, The Snow Queen from My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
How privileged you are, to still be passionately
Clinging to what you love;
The forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.
Maestoso, doloroso:
This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
Still believing in something.
-Louise Glück, from AVERNO, “october, 4.”
I think it’s important to realise you can miss something,
But not want it back.
-Paulo Coelho
“I am being
eaten away by light”
— MARGARET ATWOOD
"This year will take from me
the hardened person
who I longed to be.
I am healing by mistake.
Rome is also built on ruins."
-Eliza Griswold, “Ruins”
“we, too, assemble our rage,
its hands & mouth, though
we must choose, in the end, which:
the poem of healing
or
the poem of poisons”
― ARACELIS GIRMAY
"metanoia"
- (me-tə-ˈnȯi-ə), noun | An ancient Greek word, metanoia is described as a change of mind and change of heart, which coincides with a positive transformation in the way one lives their life. It connotes the beginning of healing.
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something is eating away at me
with splendid teeth
-Gwendolyn MacEwen, from “Memoirs of a Mad Cook,” The Armies of the Moon (Macmillan, 1972)
Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
“The grief is a planet. A dust ring.
A small moon that’s been hidden
under my pillow, that’s been changing
the way my body moves this whole time.”
― CAMILLE RANKINE
"Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we’ve missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy."
-Douglas Coupland
“Stars are not small or gentle.
They are writhing and dying and burning.
They are not here to be pretty.
I am trying to learn from them.”
— CAITILYN SIEHL
“I know that darkness.
Have stood on that bridge
in the space between the streetlights dizzy with looking down.
Maybe some darks are deep enough to swallow
what we want them to.
But you can’t have two worlds in your hands
and choose emptiness.
— MARY SZYBIST
“What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe.
It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.”
- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"let ruin end here, let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter
let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs
let this be the healing
& if not, let it be"
― DANEZ SMITH, FROM “CUM SHOT”
I’m all done with hating you. It’s all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don’t hate them very long.
- RAYMOND CHANDLER, The Lady in the Lake
It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.
-J. C. Watts
…One misstep
and suddenly, everything is burning.
I don’t want to set things on fire anymore.
That’s all. That’s all."
-Darshana Suresh, “Birds on a Power Line,” from Howling at the Moon
“I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.”
~-WALT WHITMAN, “Song of the Open Road”
"ناز/NAZ [nahz]"
— (noun) | Naz is an Urdu word defined as pride. It is a pride in a general sense, but delivered in the most elegant and graceful manner. But, naz’s greatest contribution to language is founded in the state of being loved and the special type of pride ignited from being loved. The naz of being loved signifies a super-human type of unconditional love. It brings forth the connotation of having pride in the reassurance that you will always be loved in spite of anything and everything. No matter what you do, you will be loved; there is pride and dignity in this pleasure.
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I want to be lonely no longer, but to learn again to be a human being.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
“You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
“to forget,
to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.”
— HILDA DOOLITTLE
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
— MARY OLIVER
“I was drowning in it. I was swirled in. I leapt into
her mouth, her throat, her gut, and stayed inside with the
remnants of my former life. I ate the food she ate and drank
the milk she drank. I grew until I crowded the furnishings.
I edged out her organs, her swollen heart. I grew up and out so large that I became a woman, wearing my mother’s skin”
― CATHY LINH CHE
"But who were you kidding? You took him in
with no grand dreams of salvation, but only to ease
the guilt of never having tried…"
-from How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs, Natalie Diaz, in When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012)
"We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life…it’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s 4 a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt."
-Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
“What
we know: we are more
than blood— we are more
than our hunger.”
— MARY OLIVER
"When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it."
-Caitlyn Siehl, Literary Sexts: A Collection of Short & Sexy Love Poems
“I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
“Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well, you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.”
— EDITH WHARTON, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
“I’ll give you the forest with a little house in it with all the good things there are in my construction, you’ll live joyfully - I want you to live joyfully."
-Frida Kahlo, from The Diary of Frida Kahlo
“Listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go.”
— E. E. CUMMINGS
“As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.
— MARY OLIVER
by Phaedra Rosier Tue Aug 23, 2016 4:02 am
