Survived By Quotes

“I feel disconnected from the people who I know have not experienced the exposed nerves of a close loved one yanked by pliers from one's jaws. I am different from them now. They can’t know the festering wound staining my teeth red, can't know the taste of salt and iron in everything I eat.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“Two great pains mark my grief trail like cairns:
knowing that it was going to happen, and it happening. But unlike cairns, I can never navigate back the way I came.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I never thought I would feel lucky to have pain dripping from my pores, pain stuck to the pads of my fingers, to the bottoms of my feet, to have pain become the core of my identity in an instant, but here I am.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“My sadness is a thousand-foot well; gratitude is a rope keeping me from drowning.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I am a ghost town, my body still exists among the remnants and relics, but no one lives here anymore. The locals moved out with the post office. The shelves at the corner store stand as tombstones marking the prices of items
that once waited for hands to toss them in their basket. Spiders and the remains of their kills fill the fluorescent lights. The crows don’t even stop on the wires when they fly over.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“And the truth is I am not strong enough to tread water in the salty abyss as I watch the ship sail away. I am weak-hearted. I can't hold my breath for long. I don't know how to stay afloat while searching for shallower waters. I only know how to hope that my drowning will be quick.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“In a way I was raised with three parents, my older sister always wanting to mother me
instead of sister me.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I knew I’d never see my father again after he died. But I asked him every night he spent in his hospice bed to please haunt me or send me signs from the other side. I didn’t realize he was waiting for me on the moon. When I flew there in a hot-air balloon one night, he stood smiling, full -bodied, when I opened the hatch. We bounded together, weightless, marveling at our bare feet caked in gray dust. I woke to the sound of my own laughter, grateful I figured out how to meet him”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I am not a whole, only disjointed pieces held together the way two ventricles taped to an aorta won’t beat.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I am grateful for the doom. I'd rather share my time with the dread than have no time at all.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“The drought came with the volcano. Street lamps frowned through ash-made dark. Homes turned into hills with chimneys peeking out the summits. We hummed as we trudged through the wreckage, until our hums
turned into songs. We didn’t know what else to do. Tears wouldn’t water the grass. Cries wouldn’t call the birds home.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I get used to a new person like a gift I didn't ask for. I don't know what I'm going to do
with them at first. Sometimes I throw them out. Sometimes they get tucked away on the closet shelf, forgotten. But sometimes, I question how I ever lived without them.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I wish I could go back in time to my life before The News. Before my eyes would seek the arms on the clock like a tic just to calculate: A few minutes ago, my life was different. An hour ago, I didn’t know. Twenty-four hours ago, I had no idea my life was about to change forever. Friday, one week later, I have a moment of normality when I first wake up. Just a moment. A single moment before remembering. At this time a week ago, I still didn’t know. For the rest of my life, I will never not know.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“We find our own meaning through the stories we tell ourselves.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems