Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.
— Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (via bookmania)
Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.
— Haruki Murakami - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (via glitterdeers)
Sharp Edges
I love you even though you made me cry more than once.
Those tears were the jumper cable to the rope
I untied from around my throat last night.
They were the unlit candle melting to a wad of wax
which I stuck to the back side of my desk
for safe keeping.
I do not know how to keep you safe,
but I’m trying.Last week I brushed gold-lettered words
like “love” and “forever” against my tongue.
They tasted like rum going down.
I think I’ve already forgotten how it felt.And the bags under my eyes
are for carrying dark words like “goodbye.”
They’re tucked away for safe keeping
so later, when I read your final love letters
I will bring them out and take aim and pull the trigger.
Last week I told you we’re both meant for bigger things
than buying wedding rings or kissing on beaches
but I swear to god
I will swallow mouthfuls of fire and needles
before I let you walk out of my life empty-handed.
I swear to god, I will hand you anything you ask for if you need it.Later I imagine we will both look back and laugh
at the nights wasted bending to the whims of our own breed of strangeness.
I will remember kissing the pages
of my favorite books. Remember the college kid coughing up blood on the sidewalk,
and you telling me how much it took to believe
that love isn’t about leaving handprints all over a body.
There is a word for girls who are afraid of these things.Later I will say I love you in four different languages
and I’ll probably mean it.
Afterwards the dust will fall
and we can assess the damage.
I love you, despite the damage.
He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others—the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (via wildthicket)
