Until I come to understand that to be saved doesn't mean to save but to survive.
Dagna Ślepowrońska, tr. Regina Grol
It was all infinite emptiness, except when we were together making love. And even then I dreaded the moments to come, when he would be gone. I experienced pleasure like a future pain.
Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion
We are the repetitions of the pieces of each other
Garous Abdolmalekian, Game tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
if the grief is unbearable is there another way to live with it that is not the same as bearing it?
- Judith Butler
the smoke / carries my longing / - to Heaven
Barbara Brandys, By the Fire tr. Regina Grol
From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.
Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion
he does not understand the reason for the moon
Garous Abdolmalekian, Long Poem of Loneliness tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
I believe in ending sentences with a preposition in order to give the ideas a way out.
- Heather Christle, The Crying Book
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