Willem Van Aelst, Still Life (1675)

oil on canvas, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum.

-Yiwei Chai, the jacaranda years

Sylvia Plath, from “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” Ariel

Mahmoud Darwish

The swans are gone. Still the river Remembers how white they were. It strives after them with its lights. It finds their shapes in a cloud. What is that bird that cries With such sorrow in its voice? I am young as ever, it says. What is it I miss?

Sylvia Plath · “Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices.” The Collected Poems (1981)

— Clarice Lispector, from “The Stream of Life.”

Jeanette Winterson, Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days; from 'Dark Christmas'

Edgar Allan Poe, from a letter to Mrs. Maria Clemm; 7th July, 1849

𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚 (𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟐), 𝐝𝐢𝐫. 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐚

Dolores Sampol, Oil / table, 2012