︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ Steph ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿

“Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove
I will return to thy alcove,
And glide upon the night to thee,
Treading the shadows silently.

And I will give to thee, my own,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
And the caresses of a snake
Cold gliding in the thorny brake.

And when returns the livid morn
Thou shalt find all my place forlorn
And chilly, till the falling night.

Others would rule by tenderness
Over thy life and youthfulness,
But I would conquer thee by fright!”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal

“Tiptoe past the dogs of the apocalypse
asleep in the shade of your future.
Pay at the window. You’ll be surprised: you
can pass off hope like a bad check.
You still have time, that’s the thing.
To make it good.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, How to Fly in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons

“That is the promised glade, The hill we climb, if only we dare it: Because being American is more than a pride we inherit— It’s the past we step into, and how we repair it.”
― Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country

“In Vietnamese, the word for country and the word for water are the same: Nước. Context obviously makes it clear if you're talking about the former or the latter, but in Vietnamese, your country is not the terra firma or the nationality; it's the water. The waters that feed the soil. The waters that lap your shores. If you ask someone where they're from, you're asking them literally from what waters do they come. The county of America is called, in Vietnamese, nước mỹ: the waters of America.”
― Phuc Tran, Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In