medusasprotegedaughter

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Carl Phillips, from “Civilization”, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020

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i think every flower in the world deserves a poem.

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Mary Oliver, from “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac”, Blue Horses

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𝑏𝑢𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠 <3

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Carmen Maria Machado, from "Meat Eater No. 5" [ID'd]

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Suzanne Rivecca, Ugly Bitter and True

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Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

#mary oliver #andrea cohen #ellen bass #nobody knows me better than queue

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Carl Phillips, from “The Raft”, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020

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Jeff Latosik, from “On the General Being of Lostness"

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you worry the cardboard sleeve around the coffee and think about landfills and the future without straws. you are worried about prion disease and deer. you are worried about the rising temperature of mushrooms. you are worried about teflon and microplastics and carcinogens and whatever else you're being quietly lied to about.

your mother used to jokingly say you are "a worrier," which always kind of oddly hurt your feelings. you feel like a person. and besides, you've been told one-million-times that this is normal. examples get trotted out in a pony show each time: everyone gets nervous sometimes. they talk about public speaking and picturing people naked and how when they get nervous they just-get-over-it.

you run your hands down the grater of your life and feel the sharpness. you started holding your breath in tunnels as a kid, worried that if you relax, the ceiling would cave in. like years of architects and engineers weren't responsible - you, and your faith, you were responsible for the success of infrastructure. if you slipped for a moment, your whole family would be swept away under the ocean. and the problem is that it worked - no tunnel collapsed.

you once broke a coffee carafe and even though you didn't drink from it after, you worried that there had been some previous invisible micro-break that had made you drink glass particles. you stayed awake for 24 hours, constantly dreading each swallow, waiting to taste blood.

you hate being late, you worry about it. you go to grab literally just lunch with a friend - no pressure, no emergency - and you still park the car an hour early and just sit there scrolling on your phone aimlessly. maybe you just don't like surprises or change. you triple-check you locked the doors, and then go to bed, and then get up out of bed to check twice again.

a worrier. like a strange and dreadful bingo card, you collect weekly experiences. someone tells you that you're overthinking, that's 2 points. you have to physically turn around and go back in your house to check you unplugged everything, that's 1 point. spiraling about climate change or politics or the state of the world is a free space, that's basically every evening.

you worry you're being selfish and not a good person because how come you're worried about your dog's health and the itch in your eye when you know people who are really very ill or who have it worse or who are genuinely struggling. then you worry that you're being annoying by infantilizing them. then you worry that your priorities are wrong, that you should be infinitely more worried about the state of a dying planet.

you wanted to be a person, is all. you wanted to go through life in a softness, to hold the world gently and have it whisper past you. and instead you are a worrier. everything that touches you is hard and raw and sharp like diamonds.

#inkskinned #nobody knows me better than queue

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“I treat myself like I would my daughter. I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight. Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her, leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone. I know she deserves more. I know I deserve more.”

— Michelle K., I Know I Deserve More.

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embrace

Briony Marshall (Peaceful embrace or the melting of boundaries), Stephan Sinding (To Mennesker), Gustav Vigeland (Kiss), William Zorach (Embrace), Antonio Canova (Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss)

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MAVIS NICHOLSON: "Do you think it is possible, then, for someone to forgive themselves even when they've done something absolutely terrible?"

TONI MORRISON: "Yes. It's called grace. At some point you do. If you don't, you're in a cul-de-sac. But you have to go through the fire first. You have to experience the full fall, and the complete self-loathing, in order to come around to something like the forgiving of oneself. It's when you skip responsibility, when you use a subsititute emotion like guilt--which is of no use to anyone--but if you feel the real thing which is shame, hatred, humiliation, and self-loathing: that is the door. And if you get through that, then you can forgive yourself."

Toni Morrison interview, Mavis on Four, 1988

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talk to me boy.

#nobody knows me better than queue

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George Seferis, tr. by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard from, “The Return of the Exile.” [ID in alt text]

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I just heard my mom tell my brother, “when you die, you will go outside and garden until your father says you’re done” and it took me a second to realize that my brother was playing a videogame and this was not a theological discussion.

#nobody knows me better than queue