LadyVader > LadyVader's Quotes

“don’t you dare, for one minute,
believe that my kindness makes me
anything but insurmountable.
i did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt,
and stagger back, wounded and alive,
just to hear you call me weak for trying.
i opened my door to heartache—
i gave her the fucking key.
my softness for wayward strangers
has made me nothing less
than a halfway house for aching soles.
so when you open your mouth
and call me ‘baby’
understand that i am not your next victim
in a laundry list of broken girls.
you think i don’t know you? people like you?
people with mouths for hands.
i’ve got skin like topsoil
and your teeth could never take root.
so when you go looking to make a plaything
of a sunburst,
you better look for someone with less fire
than me.
because softness or no,
i will eat you alive
before i let you make a meal of me.”
― Ashe Vernon

“This is the story of how I never stopped running. This is the story of how, when the wolves knocked, I met them at the door and I became the beast, instead.”
― Ashe Vernon, Belly of the Beast

“You are a language I am no longer fluent in
but still remember how to read.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“What they don’t tell you
about standing up for what you believe in
is that your feet will bruise
and your legs will ache.”
― Ashe Vernon

“I am carving myself into a shape
that no one will recognize
because it is better being the marble
than the monster.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“When he says he doesn’t love you anymore, roll your shoulders back and look him in the eye even when it feels like your ribs are breaking inward; like spider legs.

When he digs up old aches that he swore he forgave you for, smile and ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner.

Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper running all the way up your throat to your mouth.

When he blames you for mistakes that wear his face, do not scream.

Do not cry.

Tell him that there are boys who would be proud to say they’d love you.

Tell him that in two years you won’t even remember his name and don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie.

When he leaves, ignore the howling in your blood and do not get up after him. Not even to lock the door.

Do not, do not, DO NOT. Smell his shirts when you box them up to give them back. Not one.

Swear off dating when you realize you’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile.

It’s okay to cry over him. It’s even okay to forgive him. But do not go back to him if he did not know how to love you the first time. He won’t know how to do it the next.”
― Ashe Vernon

“Your ribcage never meant to hurt you.
Your windpipe doesn’t know how to be pretty,
but she knows how to howl—
and here, I’d like to take a moment
to submit a formal apology to my soft parts
because they kept me warm
when I was trying to freeze to death,
and I hated them for it. An apology
for a starvation that went deeper than my skin.
One for the strongest skeleton I will ever own
and how I kept using the word girl against it.
Or how I turned words like beautiful into shapes
I could contort myself into. I didn’t mean
to compare myself to faces I can’t have.
Or spend years trying to carve myself,
like Michelangelo’s angels, from the marble—
forgetting what it is to be skin instead of stone.
I let myself be afraid. I was taught to be.
When you learn you are only as good
as your beauty routine, you forget
how to define yourself by anything else.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“Trouble is, I love better at a distance...”
― Ashe Vernon

“This is a story of survival.
It is your story,
even when you feel like that word
does not belong to you.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“First,
quit picking old wounds
and going for walks in the aches
and pains you already made it through -
you call it healing, but
it sounds like a good way
to take a haunting home with you.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight