Mary Oliver, Worm Moon
Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you’re done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation.
—Hao Jingfang, ‘Invisible Planets,’ in Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, tr. & ed. Ken Liu
goosefire girl— wild. hungry. every poem I’ve written is a burning. did you think you could run from me? my matchstick blaze and your apple core. I eat you open-hearted under the noon sky. did you think you could be free of me? I birthed these hands, pulled out these veins. singlehandedly I built the mirror maze in your mind— did you think I wouldn’t catch up? crossbow loaded gun cocked ready aim fire did you think I was too far away? did you think we were two entities, separate and whole? did you think you could live if I wasn’t swallowing you cold? I’ve told you— infinite.
Venetta Octavia, mania screams
Mr Darcy walked through a lake so Mr Knightley could run several miles to his home and have a panic attack on the floor
Atonement (2007) dir. Joe Wright // Lonely by Natalie Wee // “Holding hands” by Daniel Arsham, 2015 // Taking the Hands by Robert Bly // Pride and Prejudice (2005) dir. Joe Wright // Your Hands by Florence Ripley Mastin // Anna Karenina (2012) dir. Joe Wright // No Children by The Mountain Goats // Emma (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) dir. Joe Wright
EMMA (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde
"Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn't just hold—that's ego. Love liberates. It doesn't bind. Love says, 'I love you. I love you if you're in China. I love you if you're across town. I love you if you're in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I'd like to have your arms around me. I'd like to hear your voice in my ear. But that's not possible now, so I love you. Go."
- Maya Angelou
“Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty. Reason says, Nonsense. I have walked and measured the walls here. There are no places like that. Love says, There are."
- Rumi
lissar-deactivated20220127
episode 8.5 of the podcast mabel (letter from juniper) is one of the most beautiful love letters i’ve read.
[image description: “It was my mother warned me against you, but I heard you singing in the cinnamon fern and thought you were beautiful: a thing I could never touch. Like the crest of Orion. Like the farthest Pleiades. You wore erythronium in your hair, like your name; the yellow trout lily. Lily, lily. Sometimes I think I would eat you if I could. There is a witch in a story who ate a girl she loved, and always afterwards when she spoke, flowers fell out of her open mouth. I would swallow you up, and you would be lobelia on my tongue for the rest of my life. This is what they say: it is not uncommon for us to want to eat what we love.”]