Quotes for Days

They were twin souls, soldiers destined to fight for different sides, to find each other and lose each other too quickly. She would not keep him here. Not like this.

“In the next life then,” she whispered. “Go.” She watched his eyes close once more. “Farvell,” she said in Fjerdan. “May Djel watch over you until I can once more.”

“All right,” I said. The tears came harder. There will be nothing left.

He shuddered. His eyelids drooped.

“Once more,” he said. “Speak my name once more.”

He was ancient, I knew that. But in this moment he was just a boy—brilliant, blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity.

“Aleksander.”

His eyes fluttered shut. “Don’t let me be alone,” he murmured. And then he was gone.”

We stood in the tall grass, wind singing through the reeds. He met my gaze, his blue eyes steady. “It’s not going to be okay.” He brushed the hair back from my cheeks and cupped my face in his rough hands. “None of this is happening for a reason.” He skimmed his lips over mine. “And Saints help me, Alina, I want to live forever.”

somebody always brings up van gogh—

how he swallowed yellow paint because

he wanted to put the sunshine inside himself.

how his psychosis was probably

the result of lead poisoning.

they call him a miracle, but what i see is a man

who was so sad, he found a beautiful way

to kill himself.

they say, “it’s awful isn’t it?” they say,

“it’s always the talented ones who go before their time.”

and me, a nine year old kid

who’s always been told they were so

talented

wonders when i am going to die.

we study them in school, the tortured artists.

look at all the poets who killed themselves

what would their work have been without their depression?

if it's beautiful, isn’t it sad?

as if depression is a parlor trick—

pull it out at parties, impress all your friends.

as if depression isn’t seeing how long

you can go between showers

before somebody notices or

pizza rolls for dinner three nights in a row

and then nothing the night after,

because going to the store is an impossibility

that you have not yet gathered the courage to conquer.

it is the least beautiful thing i’ve ever seen

and we call it the mark of an artist

to stand in the center of an ocean

and see nothing but desert.

to be seated at a feast, but still

swallowing sand.

depression is the yellow paint, the yellow paint,

the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the

yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow

paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint—

art is a coping mechanism.

van gogh is good because when he had nothing,

he had paint. when he was empty, he had paint.

when the world was awful, he had paint.

when he hated himself, he didn’t hate the paint.

he whitewashed over his own masterpieces,

because it was never about being famous,

it was about doing the one thing

that made sense when everything else didn’t.

and they say, “without his illness, we

never would have gotten all—this.”

because they value his art more than his sanity

because god forbid you lead a happy life

and leave nothing to remember you by.

Vincent