august-darling

[august-darling]

“I’ve thrown flowers to fields, so that someone would pick them up and know where they came from.”

— Deborah Digges, from “The Wind Blows Through the Door of My Heart,” The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

[august-darling]

Jumy-M My own world / より壮大なものの一部であること

[august-darling]

“If you would put your mouth to my throat you could breathe a taste of my sea.”

— Ruth Foley, from “Scylla,” Up the Staircase Quarterly (no. 28, 2015)I

[august-darling]

— Anna Akhmatova, The Guest

[text ID: "What do you want?" I asked. / "To be with you in hell," he said.]

[august-darling]

Der Astralmensch (The Astral Man) by Sascha Schneider, 1903.

[august-darling]

r

sometimes our laughter convinces me we would make a home out of any four walls or we could, if only you wanted to

i am like a child at times, in that i almost believe love is a strong enough force to cross borders but each time i find myself bewildered in the face of the word - almost - looking down at the abyss that is its unhinged jaw

i forget almost is an insatiable word the hunger has followed me all my life

i would have boarded a plane for you despite the pervasive fear of it crashing the way i spilled myself onto the concrete fell apart when the wind blew over the rooftop and you listened for 3 hours

yet wouldn’t have spent that time driving packed bags in the passenger seat if we hadn’t been on our knees

you would have left us alone had there been enough money to stay where you are

but it’s okay i am not ungrateful for i’ve learned things

like there is no such thing as unconditional love and money is everything and people always seem kinder than they actually are when you are clinging to the hem of their skirts

but i see it now, standing on my own two feet my father has a father too, the song says

which means you wouldn’t let me drink hard liquor but would let me leave home without a goodbye

august.

[august-darling]

— Karen Russell, "The Ghost Birds" in The New Yorker (2021)

[august-darling]

like nimrod

somewhere it is 3am and my heart is spilling like an overflowing cup. a heavy sponge. a full stomach, my heart is a stomach. my heart is beaming like afternoon light through open curtains. gushing like a broken tap. a dam giving in with a sigh of relief. wind bursting in through heavy doors, finally. 

3am, like when the tower of babel crashed down eons ago, sent people scattered and speaking in tongues. you are the angry strike of God sending me places I've never been, whispering words I've never said. like maybe I want to spend my nights cradled in the nook of your collarbone. like maybe your breath could be a blanket draping over my skin. maybe nimrod saw the glint of an angel and lost his mind to the point of ambition, built a tower to get wingspan close. I understand. 

i don't actually know what time it was when babel's pride crumbled, but i imagine it to be around the same time mine melts for you.

and you make a time traveler out of me, where the angel once made a builder out of nimrod.  i know because as I write it's too early to crash ㅡ the trees are watching. the sun is too bright for the angel to see me dare ㅡ

but somewhere it's 3am.

somewhere babel falls, over and over.

august. 

[august-darling]

 — Vladimir Nabokov, from Letters to Véra

[ text ID: I’m walking out now into the soft light, the cooling hum of evening, and I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and still many more, so very many more tomorrows. ]

[august-darling]

home, with expired film

[august-darling]

Of Power and Time, Mary Oliver— from Upstream

[august-darling]

[august-darling]

— Incendies, Wajdi Mouawad

[august-darling]

Get on the Bus, Zhang Jia Wu

[august-darling]

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

[august-darling]

Adonis, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, Selected Poems

[august-darling]

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