#khaled mattawa

i. Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

[ "her own bedroom. When she was very small, she would wake up tearing at her bedspread and shrieking, 'I wanna go home! I wanna go home!' Which was distressing to all of us, of course, because she was home." ]

ii. unknown

[ "FUCK YOU IF YOU EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN / I'LL SHOVE MY HANDS DOWN YOUR THROAT / AND RIP OUT THE VERY HEART YOU STOLE FROM ME / UNTIL YOU CAN'T BREATHE AND THE HAUNTING / IMAGES FILL YOUR BRAIN AND THE BUGS / EAT YOUR REMAINS THERE WILL BE NO / REMORSE FROM ME AND I HOPE OU ROT IN THE GRAVE / YOU STOLE MY CHILDHOOD FROM ME YOU PIECE OF SHIT" ]

iii. @/southern-gothic-decay

[ "2. You can always make things more difficult. Draw it out. Make it interesting. Oh, you don't want to follow someone else's blueprints? Oh, you want to create something new? Too bad. We can't all be architects. Some of us were born to lay the bricks. Some of us were born to hide the bodies. You've been building this house since you were born, just like your father. Just like your father, you will not live to see it finished. The house has been a nursery. The house has been a burial site. The house is swallowing bodies before the blood has dried. Your inheritance is a knife's edge. Your inheritance is a culling. When the time comes, even your coffin will be a family heirloom. Come, make sure the measurements are right." ]

iv. Adonis (tr. Khaled Mattawa), Body

[ "And his ghosts said: Let's move on / Before the body is piling itself upon itself / secret by secret / Rot is also a heart / rot is also childhood / rot is also what love is" ]

v. Mary Oliver, Metamorphosque

[ "In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be." ]

vi. Nikki Giovanni, Adulthood II

[ "There is always something / of the child / in us that wants / a strong hand to hold / through the hungry season / of growing up" ]

vii. Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

[ "Mama, I made it / out of our home / alive, raised by / the voices in my head." ]

viii. Team Dresch, Uncle Phranc

[ "My mom says she loves me / But i don't think it's love / Cause she only loves me / When i act just like she does // And that's emotional blackmail" ]

ix. @/elsiewarrenswords

[ "I think that's what happens when you've lived a lonely childhood. You get too attached to people as you get older, in the hope that they'll give you the care and love that you missed out on and never leave you." ]

x. Wych elm, Susan Smith