Knuckle Tats Say FOUC AULT

I stare, recognize the ghost of old feelings. ‘What do I remember / that was shaped / as this thing is shaped?’

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

I fear that to write so much about crying will tempt a universal law of irony to invite tragedy into my life.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

The overwhelming experience of tragedy is a disorientation expressed in one bewildered and frequently repeated question: What shall I do?

- Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

There is a solitude in this world

I cannot pierce. I would die for it.

- Ada Limón, Drowning Creek

here's Love and Death in the same breath

Niall Williams, History of the Rain

but indirectly children know everything there is to know. They just don't know why.

Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty

Remains of colour on temple columns.

What fragments of her history live in my body?

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

The world is slow to dissolve and leave us.

Matthea Harvey, Sad Little Breathing Machine

Portrait Bust of a Woman (detail), Roman, Antonine Period, 140-150 AD

Photo by Erika Dufour