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We’re strong and slutty, quiet and confident, outspoken and sarcastic and we don’t feel like smiling because we have work to do. We defy definition. And we’re not going down without a fight.
She’s not so naive. She senses, in the organ-deep way women sense things: it’s not the Devil you need to worry about, but the devil you know.
your empathy. It’s that sad, fragile, beautiful thing that will ruin you.
I like a girl with spirit when what he means is I like a girl that can break.
How it cuts through glass like a knife, uncloaks darkness only to reveal shadow.
This constant suffering, like I was Eve holding out the apple to spite myself.
There is nothing else in this world like realizing you’re going to live and not being sure you can.
for hysteria, is all wrong. It abrades. White fences are only made of wood, they splinter so easily.
-marked by fiery sunsets and green-stained nights,
Divide your organs - heart, lungs, tongue, and brain. You think you need them all?
pull our tired bodies through war, things we never asked for,
when it happens to us it’s for the best, but when it happens to them it’s tragedy.
When the moon makes bodies dark.
She is so tired of waiting —aren’t you?— for the world to become good and tolerable and kind.
Dress me in pale blue and wrap my hands in gauze. Encircle my belly with chains of flowers.
They’re not cannibals, though. More like sin-eaters, and watch how they devour. Think, how long we’ve been forced to consume these sins of our fathers.
remembers the sound, the snapping of his neck. How it felt like power.
Lady Macbeth could have dashed a child’s sleeping head against a cinder block wall, if she had one.
she has lived through a lifetime of famine and yet no one will look in her hungry eyes.
But she has scissors inside her sleeve and she clutches them. Look at her. Look at her.
tugs at my ribs and yanks at the place where I keep my grief, hidden and warm above my belly. Like a leash, bringing me back
she contains planets, universes of desire inside her body,
This is how you make me feel, like some thing blighted, broken and abnormal.
I will adorn this body with scars, twist it until it is sharp, maul it into weaponry.
If you find the tenor or shape of my words unappealing, know that you have made me. Thank you. I will use all this against you, and you will not see it coming.
I have known monsters and I have known men.
are all of us daughters doomed to become our mothers?
I’d rather arm myself in blood than be a pretty statue to stare at.
I can lay salt to stave off insanity, cruel spirits, unwanted gods. But if I lay my hands on you, will you falter?
It’s sacrifice, brutal and it leaves you staggering.
I will bathe myself in golden light like water. I will live.
