Sometimes I Read A Phrase In A Poem Or A Story Or I See The Clouds Amble In The Sky Traced By Sunlight

She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married

Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell

Last night, I told my mother "I wish I was dead" in a fit of rage and winter clouded her eyes. But it wasn't white and it wasn't quiet, it resembled something like helplessness and rage. She was in pain and I knew I hurt her. I wanted to say something, anything, but how do you withdraw a declaration of war? How do you stop the bombs that already destroyed homelands? In that moment I remembered how she always told me that when she was a kid, she was too afraid to sleep with the lights on. Not because she was afraid of monsters, but because she feared her grandmother would die. Because when you're a kid, not seeing it means it doesn't exist anymore. I saw the winter in her eyes again and I knew I had switched off the light, she wasn't angry, she was afraid.

And I also remembered how she always told me I'd always be 3 years old for her, always a child, and for the first time, I heard in the voice of a three year old "I wish I was dead". My heart broke. And I wanted to hug her and hold her, tell her I was sorry, that I didn't mean it. Before I could move a hand, she left the room. The entire evening, I saw myself as she saw me, a 3 year old child. I saw the child hurt herself and cry herself to sleep every week, fight her friends with her tiny hands and two ponytails, I saw her depression and her anxiety, I saw her yell "I wish I was dead" and I knew. I knew. I wanted to shout through the walls, yell and cry and tell my mother that now I KNEW, but I didn't. I wept and wept until I heard a quiet knock and a soft familiar voice whispered, "Dinner is ready".

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

you have a place in my heart no one else ever could have 🍃

F. Scott Fitzgerald

i love knowledge. i love knowing even the smallest of things. i love translating text and finding hidden meanings. it doesn't matter what it is, learning something new every day has always been a source of true happiness.

A Poem of Many Poems

To write, my darling

It is the only way, truly,

To be heard forever

I write because-

Because

No one can take it away

From me

Or from the world

As the poets say,

Littera scripta manet

The written word remains

Indefinitely

Even when not a soul

Can understand a word

Of what I’ve written,

The letters will be there,

The sounds,

The beauty

That there is in words,

In language

I will be a relic,

A fossil preserved in the golden amber

Of eternity

And words

The poet is as the musician is,

Forever in sound

Words and are simply that,

Beautiful melody

I haven’t finished Emma yet, but I have a theory. I’ve had this theory ever since we first saw Emma, Harriet, and Mr. Elton in a room together, but I’m just sharing it now. I think Mr. Elton might like Emma and not Harriet? No, I’m nearly positive. I guess we’ll see?

This very morning, my history professor picked up the book I was reading, looked me in the eye, and said “Don’t read Wuthering Heights.” He then proceeded to walk away and continue class.

If I Don’t Love You

If I don’t love you,

then why,

darling,

explain to me why,

do you look so gorgeous?

Violet light,

weaving itself through strands

of golden hair.

If you don’t love me,

then why am I the first person you look at

when you walk into the room?

Some sort of something

in your eyes

as they dart away from mine.

I forget to breathe.

I see you walk out,

pretending not to notice you.

Pretending not to notice

how your eyes flick to me as you sit

carelessly

with the sun and the blue sky.

I caution a glance

as I walk away.

I don’t love you?

I don’t love you.

P.S. Yes, this one’s about the academic rival.

To learn that

one who speaks of

such that is different from their actions

is an idiot,

to entertain the notion

of facing you.

Why?

Who are you?

"To define is to limit," you say,

a smirk dancing on your lips.

It is because you know who you are, that you need someone to find out who that is.

For that is what it is

to be worthy of you.

carpe noctem