Blackhead And Sea, George Wesley Bellows, 1913

of burning but unwasting fire

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“You want to know what it was like? It was like my whole life had a fever. Whole acres of me were on fire. The sun talked dirty in my ear all night. I couldn’t drive past a wheatfield without doing it violence. I couldn’t even look at a bridge. I used to go out in the brush sometimes, So far out there no one could hear me, And just burn. I felt all right then. I couldn’t hurt anyone else. I was just a pillar of fire. It wasn’t the burning so much as the loneliness. It wasn’t the loneliness so much as the fear of being alone. Christ look at you pouring from the rocks. You’re so cold you’re boiling over. You’ve got stars in your hair. I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you And never walk back out.”

— Nico Alvarado, “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls” (via cannedheaven)

There is a solitude in this world

I cannot pierce. I would die for it.

- Ada Limón, Drowning Creek

since you were unable to take all the bad you were given learn now to fight with your nails for every inch of ground under your foot

Anna Czekanowicz, A Polish Mother tr. Regina Grol

The darkness was more compassionate to his swollen and violent heart.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Maybe we do not cry about, but rather near or around. Maybe all our explanations are stories constructed after the fact.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

Portrait Bust of a Woman (detail), Roman, Antonine Period, 140-150 AD

Photo by Erika Dufour

A bird pecks at the corroded corner of the sky

Garous Abdolmalekian, Long Poem of Loneliness tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

I am only as much as I'm not.

Dagna Ślepowrońska, tr. Regina Grol

Of the moon all that's left is a stain upon the window.

Garous Abdolmalekian, Necklace tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey