“Those Lovers Are Mostly Gone. My Hands Remain—: Like Altars.”

we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

I always want to see you laughing. It belongs to you.

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

green leaves / torn straight from the cross

- Agata Tuszyńska, Faith tr. Regina Grol

I want to say the poet is never afraid because he is unceasingly afraid, and therefore cannot become that which he already is

Mary Ruefle, On Fear

The first thing you ever did was cry.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

We are the repetitions of the pieces of each other

Garous Abdolmalekian, Game tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

Thought and life are as the poles asunder.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

and I never knew survival was like that. If you live, you look back and beg for it again, the hazardous bliss before you know what you would miss.

Ada Limón, Before

of burning but unwasting fire

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

You're the muscle / I cut from the bone and still the bone / remembers, still it wants (so much it wants)

Ada Limón, In A Mexican Restaurant I Recall How Much You Upset Me