boysrunaway

i. Sylvia Plath, letter to Ann Davdiow-Goodman

[ "I know I'll always think of you with something like hurt and nostalgia - and a great deal of love." ]

ii. Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

[ "This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in." ]

iii. Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty

[ "You fought and fought to keep all the cruelty locked up in your head, and for what? None of them ever loved you, because none of them ever knew you." ]

iv. unknown

[ "and you've cried once more because recognition feels like forgiveness, which is a burning furnace that can't stand on its own. love is a feast but you've learned to abstain. there is a sickness that follows the shame of giving with love only to be met with slaughter." ]

v. Angelica Alzona, Intimacy / The National, Daughter of the Soho Riots

[ Surrealist painting of a man and a woman kissing as their faces blend together. Red outlines of hands reach up around them. "BREAK MY ARMS / AROUND THE ONE I LOVE" ]

vi. Tatheve Simonyan, A Prayer

[ "Rage, that is love - rotten! / Rage, that is desire - rotten! / Rage! - like a prayer, unanswered, ricocheting from your ceiling and landing right onto your eyes, never quite reaching where it was meant to." ]

vii. FAUNTHEKiD

[ "being in close proximity to you / is being led to the slaughter / if that the lamb is aware is alive is accepting / if that the slaughter is love love love" ]

viii. Victoria Chang, Foghorn

[ "The great mystery / is whether I love you or / I just love mourning. / The absence of a laugh just / gone, and the air that fills it." ]

ix. unknown/Richard Siken, Crush

[ Silhouette of a boy looking downwards. Red streaks from the background spread outwards from the middle. "I'll be your / slaughterhouse, / your killing floor, / your morgue / and final resting" ]

x. Hala Alyan, I'm Not Speaking First