About
Fresh library sci graduate, part-time shieldmaiden, and seasonal writer.
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→ the final sentence
→ nothing but windows
Thank you, guys! Means the world to me; makes me feel less awkward and sooooo glad to have had shared (and shown) that with all of you.
“Interior of Woman Placing Branches in a Vase on Table”, 1900
by Vilhelm Hammershøi
the fragment of a poem
that comes to one while walking
between spaghetti and ham
in the market by the metro station,
and the rush to get home.
And the days afterwards
of telling it over and over
until it is right there, alight
on my fingertips.”
— Becky Dennison Sakellariou, from “Questions About Love”
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.”
— Julia Kasdorf, “What I Learned From My Mother”
I asked her if she was sad/mad in this photo, she answered, “You were miserable and cold. I couldn’t bear it.”
— David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
Like you live inside someone, like an owl in a hollow tree.”
— Caitlin Moran
In ten days I’ll be sitting on a plane heading to the Peninsula to attend my grad/convo ceremony. I’ll be the one wearing dark blue gown, sitting between two strangers—call me.
The birds are awfully noisy today. This is from before a group of them left the front lawn.
— Louis CK
