How Many Times Can The Same Thing Break Your Heart?

I've been smoking cigarettes made from your veins huffing that pain worshipping your blood like it wasn't enough just to keep you alive needed it inside me to be a part of the prophecy which hums with power what I've become condensates in the shower a touch of evening air a balmy breeze through his hair that's all you think of me and think of me often? Hardly.

Words by me <3

Pittsburgh Daily Post, Pennsylvania, February 20, 1927

Ossuaries, Dionne Brand

things from sappho to call your girlfriend

ἀστέρων πάντων ὀ κάλλιστος (of all the stars, the fairest)

πόλυ πάκτιδος ἀδυμελεστέρα, χρύσω χρυσοτέρα (far sweeter-sounding than the lyre, far more golden than gold)

τὰν ἰόκολπον (violet-tressed, one with violets in her lap)

ὦ κάλα, ὦ χαρίεσσα κόρα (o beautiful, graceful girl)

ἦρος ἄγγελος ἰμερόφωνος ἀήδων (nightingale, sweet-voiced messenger of spring)

Sylvia Plath, from “The Jailer.”

“Dark and Fair” by Tadeusz Styka (ca. 1908) Marthe Barnède, nicknamed Madame Sappho, is ‘a stunning brunette, with hair the color of deep shadow,’ while Colette, her young and frail lover, is described as ‘a pretty girl with lily-white skin and light blonde hair that crowned her pale ivory forehead with a riotous golden halo. (source).

Liberty and Fifth, Pittsburgh, ca. 1940

I imagine spring arrives black dress, thigh boots, satin glove begrudging and disinterested for 𝒫𝑒𝓇𝓈𝑒𝓅𝒽𝑜𝓃𝑒 has left her love. I imagine she's kept her habits from the dark depths of hell blowing smoke in the face of daffodil and bluebell. The world opens up with sweetness and glee and she rolls her eyes muttering "yeah... It's me."

— Carolina Outcrop

Be, be as you've always been

Be like the love that discovered the sin

That freed the first man and will do so again

And, lover, be good to me

Be that hope when Eden was lost

It's been deaf to our laughter since the master was crossed

Which side of the wall really suffers that cost?

And, lover, be good to me

Be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

Be, be as you've always been

True to the time and the placе you've been given

Your heart in thе world, and a world there within

And, lover, be good to me

Be there and just as you stand

Or be like the rose that you'd hold in your hand

That grows bold in a barren and an uneasy land

And, lover, be good to me

And, be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

Be as you've always been