hush, my sweet, these tornados are for you

“I want you to know that it is not always easy to love me. That sometimes my chest is a field full of landmines, and where you went last night, you can’t go tomorrow. There is no manual, there is no road map, no help line you can call; my body does not come with instructions, and sometimes even I don’t know what to do with it. This cannot be easy. But still, you touch me anyway.”

Remember: he opened you on the dissection board and he studied your most tender pieces with his teeth and his fist.

“May you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you — haunt me then.”

Even in poetry I forgive you nothing not even your new empire of grief.

On April 20, 1970, the poet Paul Celan left his home in Paris, walked to a bridge over the River Seine, and jumped to his death. He left a biography of Hölderlin open on his desk, with the following words underlined: Sometimes this genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart. The sentence does not end there. Celan chose not to underline the rest: but mostly his apocalyptic star glitters wondrously.

This is how I will always remember you: trembling like an antelope brought down by arrows, asking the arrows if it’s okay to bleed.

almost      willing to be eaten alive if it means feeling weightless again

“When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it’s safe inside your mouth.”

  in a past life i was stillborn, baptized by grief. i’m always