ANDREA

a dialogue between the unloved and the loving

neil hilborn // miranda july // @orpheuslament // aaron o’hanlon // georges bataille // georges bataille “my mother/madame edwarda/the dead man” // @khariyaha // natalie wee “least of all” // @fridayiminlovemp3 // maria petrovykh “love me. i am pitch black” // “the seven husbands of evelyn hugo” // sylvia plath “johnny panic & the bible of dreams” // mary oliver “wild geese” // sue zhao // virginia woolf from a letter to katherine mansfield // trista mateer

[ID: a collection of excerpts of text.

..saying goodbye. yes, there is a place where someone loves you both before and after they learn what you are.”

“finally, in a low whisper, he said, “i think i might be a terrible person.” for a split second i believed him - i thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. then i realized that we all think we might be terrible people. but we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”

screaming take me as I am or kill me / screaming peel my skin off like a blindfold / screaming love me despite the horror / screaming please, God, love me because of it.

“show me your thorns and i’ll show you hands ready to bleed.”

“i don’t want your love unless you know i’m repulsive and love me as you know it”

People always think we look for love at our lowest to distract us. I am convinced we do it because we want someone to look us in the eye, to look our ugly in the eye and still choose us. I didn’t want a distraction, (highlighted) I wanted you to see a mess and still find me worthy of love, to tell me that you could still love me anyway. (end highlight)

“i kneel into a dream where i / am good & loved. i am good. / i am loved. my hands have made / some good mistakes. they can always / make better ones.

 capitalized letters that look like they’ve been cut and pasted on top of overhead pictures of fields. it reads: “tell me every terrible thing you ever did / and let me love you anyway.”

love me. i am pitch black, / sinful, blind, confused. / but if not you, then who else / is going to love me?

“if you are intolerable, let me be the one to tolerate you,” i said, and then i kissed her and tasted the lemon juice on her lips.

“you have seen the rotten streak in me and you have come back, no matter how bad it was. you have always come back. can’t you see? you have taken me always as I am, no matter what.”

“i wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.” “like what?” “i don’t know,” she hesitated. “like you could love me.”

“i love you, and i am conscious of you all the time.”

in this space right here that we have made for each other, you can say anything and i will not abandon you. unwrap the worst things you have done. watch me hold them up to the light and not even flinch.