“And so it seems that I must always write you letters that I can never send.”
— Sylvia Plath
The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau, 1865, Claude Monet
hey 😏
hi
waiting for the sunlight,
sky hangs heavy,
clotted with clouds,
every minute a drip
into the vast puddle
of waiting.
they told to run—
Just run.
how to escape
when the legs are tied
to the same place,
to the same people,
to the same whatevers.
walking in circles,
feet tracing the same path
to more waiting,
more silence.
in the room
where the walls are made of promises
that never came true.
The words, they fall
from mouths like wet leaves,
unraveling slowly,
and I cannot remember
when I stopped believing them,
but now
they stick to my skin.
Expectations—
they were something bright once,
something I could grasp,
but now they are shards
in the back of my throat,
a choking on what I cannot swallow.
I am the person
who fails them,
who fails myself,
and still I stand,
to crack the earth open
and let me breathe again.
The faces around me
are nothing but mirrors
reflecting silence.
They take,
but give nothing
but their own crumbling edges,
and I keep trying
to hold them together
as if my hands aren’t already
full of cracks.
Every touch is a weight,
a slow erosion of my own spirit,
and still,
I stay.
I stay because it is easier
than the weight
of nothing.
But in this stillness,
In this place
where no one grows,
I am caught—
and I wait,
for the moment
to swallow me whole.
Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
“I know you, and stare at you in silence.”
— Arthur Rimbaud, from ‘Flowerbeds of Amaranths’
Touching your hands make me feel at home and lost at the same time. I will never know which one I like more,which one takes me far away from myself and closer to you.
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems; ‘Water’ by Wisława Szymborska tr. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
[ID: How light the raindrop’s contents are. /How gently the world touches me.]
A favourite , always !
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
— Haruki Murakami