AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

You hate yourself so loudly. You hate yourself at the top of your lungs. Your loathing for yourself permeates your speech. “Sorry I’m just rambling.” “Don’t worry about it.” “Just ignore me.” “Sorry if I’m annoying you.” “Sorry I don’t make sense.” “Sorry about that.” Sorry, sorry, sorry. You act as if you have to beat everyone else to the punch. As if the punching bag is you. If you hate yourself first, if you hate yourself loudest, then nobody will hurt you. You clapped your hands over your ears and shut your eyes and balled yourself up so that you’d never have to experience people’s loathing for you. And it meant you never heard their love. You drowned it out. You screamed your hatred over it. And you never got to hear it. 

Ocean Vuong, from “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

Kim Addonizio, “The Singing”, Tell Me

Guillaume Apollinaire, from Aubade (tr. by Donald Revell); Alcools: Poems, 1913

“Now my wishes are down to two: / Staying alive. And wanting to.”

— Traci Brimhall, from “Dear Thanatos,” Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod (via lifeinpoetry)

“How beautiful to find a heart that loves you, without asking you for anything, but to be okay.”

— Khalil Gibran

— Franz Kafka asking Felice Bauer to marry him (Letters to Felice)

you can hate yourself all you want but the world is beautiful and it welcomes you

DECEMBER 2023 (What I was given I shall never now forget / But my heart knows I'll never live this again)

May Sarton / Saisho / David Levithan / Emily St. John Mandel + Syllabillin / Hanif Abdurraqib / Svend Svendsen / Nia Vardalos / Naomi Shihab Nye [8,15] / Laura Makabresku / Mary Oliver [10,20] / Andrei Dobrynin / Hélène Cixous / Clifton Rooney / Walk the Moon / Rainer Maria Rilke / Heikala / Gracie Abrams / quinnie / Iris Scott / Mark Oliver Everett / Sally Rooney / Sara Roberts / Ask Polly