The Willow Song Quotes

“I Am the City

The spaces between streets,
The lights that bloom on corners,
The lines that hold us together.

I may be a name,
I may be a crossroad,
I may be a saint.

I am a city.
I am a name.
I am.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“I like to leave a little bit of poetry in everyone I meet—but in the end, I find there’s a lot less of poetry left in me whenever they go.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“I like to leave a little bit of poetry in everyone I meet—but in the end, I find there’s a little bit of poetry left in me whenever they go.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Pothole in the Sky

My veins ground too deep to become a statue,
And the flight is delayed too late—
So I take off again.

I take off without the vein of the city
That lifts me to heaven with a million lights
And a few streets in between.

The darkness blooms like a desert,
And in my aeroplane, I become a small flower,
Travelling too far and without sight.

Clouds outside windows become a stair frame,
And the dark blue of mornings drifts by,
While I dream of Paris and every thought

That drifted by.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“The City That Holds Me

The sidewalks I stumble on more than once
Make me feel like I am walking home.
The place cold enough to die for,

Yet I walk towards the next day without freezing.
The river that drowns my words,
As I wander its same stretch, up and down.

My chapels know my favourite corners,
Where I light my candles each good Sunday.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“A Line Across the Seine

Whatever I made of you
Surrenders to beauty.

For I am a simple line
That crosses the Seine,

Remembering each wave
Upon the stones of light.

However often the light shines
Towards the blue of morning skies,

I’ll be here.
I’ll write.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Parisian Endings

Endings share a bond between right and wrong,
Upon every poet who dares to cross a line.

The Parisian sky glows light with blue and orange,
Each hill a line of fortune, unique to every soul.

Words cross the heart I call cœur,
And dawn in the same eternal hues behind her.

By noon, I become the city itself,
Only to return as her passenger,
By walking far enough to lose her.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Paris

The Seine dresses in light black,
Mimicking the dark grey of the sky,

And so, I drown my ink into it.
Each poem becomes art,

Reflecting and dancing
Around my hands with care.

The notes the river shares
Become a painting that inspires
All the great artists housed in its museums.

Still, I vow and pray by its sight —
Yet I dare not claim to be an artist
As great as the one in sight.

In Paris.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“What speaks slowly becomes bold.
What begins as a letter becomes a book.

Whoever crosses a line is a poet.
Whoever is a poet becomes a revolt.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“White blossoms on cold sheets;
Roses outside the garden's wall.

Falling feels easier than growing
Once you've reached each peak.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“A HOTEL ROOM IN PARIS #31

At the bottom of the lonely window,
The sky looks almost velvety lilac.

While at the top, the window frame
Seems to drown in front of an ocean of blue satin.

White window frames in uneven walls
Cast no shadow, so the light projects the soul of each traveller instead.

So I sit here in silence, filtering out the noise
That the boulevards inhabit and sing each day.

Only the music I keep in my room, the silent solitude each one carries;
Carries far and – may I hope – home soon.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Red Cursive Letters —
Half-Printed,
Nearly Missing The Opening Line.
You Wrote Drunkenly
On Crumbling Paper
While The Truth Is Split Up
Into One Lie”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Red Cursive Letters —
Half-Printed,
Nearly Missing The Opening Line.
You Wrote Drunkenly
On Crumbling Paper
While The Truth Is Sliced Up
Into One Lie”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“What cannot hold you
is meant to carry you forward;
what cannot love you
is meant to free you fiercely.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Art is a view
many look upon
from different perspectives—
some create it
while others stand
a hundred miles away,
a hundred years away,
a hundred words away.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“What cannot hold you
is meant to carry on forward;
what cannot love you
is meant to free you fiercely.
What cannot stay here
is meant to let you live definitely.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“„I like to leave a little bit of poetry in everyone I meet -but in the end, I find there’s a little bit of poetry left in me whenever they go.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“The pale blue evening light of fading shadows crashes violently against the hill behind the town—facing radical orange and poisoned greens. It steams upward against a bluish sky that has swallowed every cloud in this modern summer May.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“„I think by haunting other people’s ghosts, we just try to forget our own. We haunt other people’s history and meaning, reflecting it in everything we do ourselves. Yet we are cursed with our own ghosts — ones that maybe others will be blessed to chase, in order to forget their own.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“„Heute zerstört man Liebe nicht durch Untreue – Ehrlichkeit reicht. Sie vertreibt alle. Sogar dein Selbstwertgefühl.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“„In der heutigen Zeit – dem großen Zeitalter der Modernisten – zerstört man eine Liebe nicht mehr durch Untreue oder Ungerechtigkeit; man muss nur ehrlich und man selbst sein. Das allein wird alle in die Flucht schlagen – sogar das eigene Selbstwertgefühl.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“In this day and age — the great age of modernists — you don’t ruin a love by being unfaithful or unjust; you just have to be truthful and yourself. That alone will scare everyone off — including your own sense of self-worth.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“I Want…

I want to inhale life,
Not just exhale it.
I want to feel alive,
Not just go on living.
I want to exist,
Not just fade away.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“The Might of Me

I won’t write about
how I saved myself after you left—
The truth is
you never really stayed,
so I had nothing to save
but the might of me
and the could have beens
in every sentence since then.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Ireland

The land is scarred
by hills and roads of foreign.
Ways lead to false capitals
and answered calls of long-ago wars.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Unmoored

I set myself abound,
Like a new ship standing against the ocean;
The waves set free
By land of long imprisonment—
Alone.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“Wasted Chances
I think life offers many chances,
And we waste most of them by never taking them—
(Just like untouched glasses of champagne.)”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“The Tragedy of the Ordinary

The ordinariness is tragic—
Not because it happens all over again,
But when it doesn’t, it hurts every day.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“The Weight of Perception

I destroy myself by thinking about what I’m not;
And they who love me destroy themselves by thinking that I am.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song

“We Haunt the People We Love

We haunt the people that we love,
And we become ruins by doing so.
Chasing them down every line,
No matter if spoken or lived by it.

Running in circles, remembering them,
While watching ourselves turn into others' ghosts.
We haunt and live—
And we will outlive.”
― Laura Chouette, The Willow Song