“You Want To Know What It Was Like? It Was Like My Whole Life Had A Fever. Whole Acres Of Me Were On

Until I come to understand that to be saved doesn't mean to save but to survive.

Dagna Ślepowrońska, tr. Regina Grol

Death wanted to be this beautiful but we buried it

Garous Abdolmalekian, Sea tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

A handwritten note, scrawled in Arabic on a torn cigarette pack, was discovered on the ground last week in Pozzallo as migrants filed off a ship. It was from someone initialed “A” to someone else initialed “R.”

“I wanted to be with you,” read the note. “Don’t you dare forget me. I love you very much. My wish is for you not to forget me. Be well my love. A loves R. I love you.”

كلمات عربية مكتوبة بخط اليد على غلاف علبة سجائر ممزقة عُثر عليها بعد إنقاذ مركب لمهاجريين غير شرعيين لإيطاليا من أ لـ ر The New York Times | T.B : Lynsey Addario 

the tenderness…. 

All the bells say: too late.

John Berryman, Dream Song 29

Much has been said and written about the ‘haiku moment’ - that it blurs the distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘self’ and ‘other’; that in it the perception of the essential and accidental, of the beautiful and the ugly, disappears; that it reflects things are they are in themselves.

- Yoel Hoffman, Japanese Death Poems

and the moon is the mouth of a lover

Garous Abdolmalekian, Acquiescence tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

We live by the waters breaking out of the heart.

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

It is a mistake therefore to compare someone writing about his own life to an exhibitionist, since the latter has only one desire: to show himself and be seen at the same time.

Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

17th century astronomical art of Maria Clara Eimmart; celestial splendor from a forgotten woman who broke the bounds of her time.

(brainpickings.org)