do you think we'll ever feel like this again?

[Text ID: I whispered: memory hurts wherever you touch it,]

[Text ID: “Those lovers are mostly gone. My hands remain–: like altars.”]

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

— Carl Phillips, from “On Coming Close,” Then the War (via lifeinpoetry)

— To Raja Rao, by Czeslaw Milosz

Anaïs Mitchell, lyrics from “How Long,” Hadestown LP (Righteous Babe Records, 2010)

Crush, Richard Siken

— torrin a. greathouse, from “Ekphrasis on My Rapist’s Wedding Dress,” Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (via lifeinpoetry)

[Text ID: What / keeps me here? / Only my heart / that won't give up — / a puffed sparrow / gripping a twig, / a stubborn / leaf in a bare shrub.]

or, the limitation of the medium | In stillness, terror. musings

[Text ID: I love you. I love you, / but I'm turning to my verses / and my heart is closing / like a fist.]

thinking…

THE ONLY THING THAT IS TRULY MINE IS THE WEIGHT I CARRY, 2021 | n.p

— Taylor Johnson, from “June, DC,” Inheritance (via lifeinpoetry)

— Alessandra Lynch, from “Roy,” Pretty Tripwire (via lifeinpoetry)

— Alessandra Lynch, from “Couplets” Pretty Tripwire (via lifeinpoetry)

Lucille Clifton, from The Book of Light; “Climbing”