Some people are born with tornadoes in their lives, but constellations in their eyes. Other people are born with stars at their feet, but their souls are lost at sea.

Nikita Gill, Perspectives (via books-n-quotes)

My audience is God,
because who the hell else could understand me?
Who else has been dead twice?

Margaret Atwood, Half-Hanged Mary. (via xshayarsha)

brennatwohy:

“Forgive Me My Salt,” Brenna Twohy.

beshenstvo:

in the desert by stephen crane

The Gods Among Us

notbecauseofvictories:

C. DALE YOUNG

One of them grants you the ability

to forecast the future; another wrenches
your tongue from your mouth, changes you
into a bird precisely because you have been
given this gift. The gods are generous

in this way. I learned to avoid danger, avoid fear,
avoid excitement, these the very triggers that prompt
my wings from their resting place deep inside.
And so, I avoided fights, avoided everything really.
In the locker room, I avoided other boys,

all the while intently studying that space
between their shoulder blades, patiently looking
for the tell-tale signs, looking to find even
one other boy like me, the wings buried but
there nonetheless. I studied them from a distance.

When people challenge a god, the gods curse them
with the label of madness. It is all very convenient.
And meanwhile, a god took the form of a swan
and raped a girl by the school gates. Another
took the shape of an eagle to abduct a boy

from the football field. Mad world.
And what about our teachers? Our teachers
expected us to sit and listen. In Theology, there was
a demon inside each of us; in History,
the demons among us. So many demons

in this world. Who among us could have spoken up
against the gods, the gods who continued living
among us? They granted wishes and punishments
much the way they always had. Very few noticed them
casually taking the shape of one thing or another.

A flaking of skin, the
shedding of something no longer
recognisable. Eve becomes the snake or
the snake becomes Eve. Whichever way round
she is freer. She wakes up with dust
in her eyes and calls it love.
Bakes herself on sun-hot rocks
and finds heaven in the healing there.
Hell follows her around (Hell called Man,
Hell called Adam) trying to make
the changing about him.
Adam demands of God why
he is being punished like this.
Eve finds grace
in the dark cracks between rocks.
Eve finds God in the solitude.
Eve finds absolution
in the red press of her knees / scales
into the dirt.
Eve, unblinking, watches Adam rail.
Adam demands answers and
Eve / snake / Eve exits the Garden
to go and find them for herself.

Eden by Elisabeth Hewer (via elisabethhewer)

Say it now: honey from the sweet, drunk, dead:
I lift my eyes,

I’m listening; the moon sinks;
I chart the back of my hand.

I don’t hear your words: I hear the wind,
my dreams, disasters, my own strange name.

John Thompson, from “Ghazal XXIII,” in Stilt Jack
(via a-pair-of-ragged-claws)

The wind never grows old, the sea is ageless. The sun, the sky, are eternal. I gaze out into the distance, at each crest of foam. I think I know what I’ve come in search of. I think I can see inside myself like someone who’s been visited by a dream.

Jean-Marie G. Le Clézio, from The Prospector (Atlantic Books, 2016)

and here we are
with our names for the days
the vast days that do not listen to us

W. S. Merwin, from “How it Happens" from The Shadow of Sirius (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)