if i had a quote book

I had a stroke and forgot almost everything. My handwriting was big and crooked and I couldn’t walk. I slept a lot. I made lists, a working glossary. Meat. Blood. Floor. Thunder. I tried to understand what these things were and how I was related to them. Thermostat. Agriculture. Cherries Jubilee. Metamodernism. I understand North, but I struggle with left. Describing the world is easier than finding a place in it. Doorknob. Flashlight. Landmark. Yardstick.

“Bring me the peace for which I would endure a thousand chaotic storms. Show me the excruciating wait has not been fruitless.”

“I have late conversations with the moon; he tells me about the sun, and I tell him about you.”

The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I’ve been waiting.

“I took wild honey from the plants. I took salt from the waters, I took light from the sky. I have only poetry to give you.”

“The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”

“I’m 24 years old and play this game with myself: buy myself something delicious for the weekend, blueberry muffins or flaky croissants, and forget it by Friday. Saturday morning comes and I am lucky to know me. I wasn’t born knowing how to love me, but I’m learning now; catching up for lost time between us. I keep the windows open. I play oldies throughout every corner of my apartment. I tell the dog how good it feels, at least for today, at least for right now, to be alive.”

“I took wild honey from the plants. I took salt from the waters, I took light from the sky. I have only poetry to give you.”

“A little madness in the spring is wholesome,”

Poetry in general doesn’t do anything, there are just individual poems. Some of them I don’t get, some of them seem banal, some of them change my life. So there you go. It’s bound to be a spectrum, it’s the same with bagels.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large – I contain multitudes.”