cruelalchemy

[cruelalchemy]

When I’m angry I’ll do anything to prove that I’m still in-control. Sneak upstairs and drink all of the whiskey. Run into the street at 3 a.m. just because I can. Because I want to say,  saying, Look at all this ruin and my two hands. All of my mess belongs to me. This is my downfall. There is nothing left for anyone to pick at.

this mess, Lora Mathis (via lora-mathis)

[cruelalchemy]

Conversations about her always start the same way. Someone asks: “What does your tattoo mean?” And I say, “I loved somebody too much once.” They shake their head. Like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Like I’m one of those parents with selective hearing. They shake their head and point. “No, not that one. The one on your foot.” I say, “Every part of me means the same thing.”

Trista Mateer // excerpts #2  (via tristamateer)

[cruelalchemy]

[…] I found the rooms between the violence of comets. I threw myself into anything’s path. Even the sky bent around me. How lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill.

Jeremy Radin, from ‘So I Locked Myself Inside a Star for Twenty Years’ (via soracities)

[cruelalchemy]

She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you’ll know loss for the rest of your life.

Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (via yoforbes)

[cruelalchemy]

I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist.

Frank O'Hara, excerpt from “Mayakovski" 

[cruelalchemy]

Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

Richard Siken

[cruelalchemy]

It was a mistake to keep this single knife in my heart so long, but it is my knife, and my heart, too,

Richard Jackson, from “Basic Algebra,” Richard Jackson Greatest Hits: 1980-2004 (Pudding House Publications, 2004)

[cruelalchemy]

I can’t live here In my body, I mean I can’t live in my body all the time it feels too much So if I ever feel far away know I am not gone I am just underneath my grief Adjusting the dial on my radio faith so I can take this life with all of it’s love and all of it’s loss See I already know that you are the place where I am finally going to sing without any static meaning I’m never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back and I’m never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already When we all know everyone’s life has been hard enough already it’s hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyone’s playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart. Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there better be a thousand separate heavens for all of my separate parts

Andrea Gibson, “Royal Heart” (via hereislight)

[cruelalchemy]

do you have a favorite poem

tulips by sylvia plath is one of them

I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly    As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.   I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.   

[cruelalchemy]

That image of Joan of Arc burning up in a fire burned inside me like a new religion. Her face skyward. Her faith muscled up like a holy war. And always the voice of a father in her head. Like me. Jesus. What is a thin man pinned to wood next to the image of a burning woman warrior ablaze? I took the image of a burning woman into my heart and left belief to the house of father forever.

Lidia Yuknavitch, from The Chronology of Water

(via hush-syrup)

[cruelalchemy]

Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (via purplebuddhaproject)

[cruelalchemy]

There’s a dream in the / space between the hammer and the nail: the dream of / about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream, but the nail will / take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever.

Richard Siken, from “Logic,”War of the Foxes (via lifeinpoetry)

[cruelalchemy]

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that / I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you, / that when I remember you, I always remember you / as beautiful.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, from “Heavenly Creature” in Oh, Terrible Youth

[cruelalchemy]

suppose the body did this to us, / made us afraid of love—

Louise Glück, from “Crater Lake,” Averno: Poems (via lifeinpoetry)

[cruelalchemy]

Kill what you can’t save what you can’t eat throw out what you can’t throw out bury What you can’t bury give away what you can’t give away you must carry with you it is always heavier than you thought.

Margaret Atwood, from “November,” You Are Happy (Oxford University Press, 1974)

[cruelalchemy]

When I touch her, my fingers don’t question what she is. My body knows who she is. The strange thing about strangers is that they are unknown and known. There is a pattern to her, a shape I understand, a private geometry that numbers mine. She is a maze where I got lost years ago, and now find the way out. She is the missing map. She is the place that I am. She is a stranger. She is the strange that I am beginning to love.

Jeanette Winterson, “The Stone Gods”  (via sarahcosima)

[cruelalchemy]

[…] I found the rooms between the violence of comets. I threw myself into anything’s path. Even the sky bent around me. How lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill.

Jeremy Radin, from ‘So I Locked Myself Inside a Star for Twenty Years’ (via soracities)