Румина Василева

“I don't know how to speak anymore. And with whom?

I never found a soulmate. No one was a dream. They left me with open dreams, with my central wound wide open, with my heart torn. I mourn myself; this is my right. And yet I look down on those who take no interest in me. My only desire has been.

I will not say it. Even I, or especially I, betray myself. Like a nursing boy, my soul has been soothed. I don't know how to speak anymore. I can't speak anymore. I have taken apart, what they never gave me, which was all I had. And it is death again. It closes in on me, it is my only horizon. No one resembles my dream. I have felt love and they mistreated it, yes, me, I who never loved. The deepest love will disappear forever. What can we love that isn't a shadow? The sacred dreams of childhood have already died, and with them, those of nature, which loved me.”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

“I am the woman you didn’t prepare for, the one you can’t quite grasp yet can’t forget.”
― Nikki Rowe

“Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong.”
― Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

“This whole 'leaving' thing? It's in me.”
― Maeve Higgins, Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else