Broken Body Fragile Heart Quotes

“But nobody writes fairy tales
about the ugly and poems
are not there for the broken
and I will never find myself
in the words of a hymn
nor will any whispered prayer
ever say my name
(which name, which me
am I looking for?)
because I am shouting
at a cross splintered into pieces
by my angry fists, and crying
at the stained glass falling
like killing rain around me.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“I want her sinful arms wrapped around me,
bloodied and angry and triumphant in shame.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“In my mind he is a demon and a god
and I blame him, I blame him, I blame him
for the world I created on my own
as much as the one he built around me.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“I throw myself away so no one,
not even you, can have me.
Taste that on your lips, eat
the bitter fruit of my parting:
I am already too far away.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“In July I think
about the idea of being cursed
(because it’s not strange to me;
when I look in mirrors I’m
not there, blank walls gleaming
with bloody condensation,
and my shadow behind me
mocking me with his persistence
when I keep telling him
to leave just to leave to let me be).”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“In May I keep count.
Two and a half more days of school;
five between exams.
Twenty thousand words of a novel
and four poems and six borrowed books.
More numbers to add to counting my pills
and trying to work out how to stay awake.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“I cut off all my hair, cut away
at the soft curves of my clothing
until I have edges once again,
using my body like broken glass
to slice at the world around me.

I have to take something back,
because I have nothing more to give.

Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani?”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“You have constellations
growing under your skin.
starlight in the blood spilled
when they stole your feathers”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“It’s voyeuristic the way you search
for answers in these cries for help,
and how you see Death’s fingers
but always think they’re paintbrushes.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“I cannot love my neighbour as myself
because you bid me do him no harm,
and I cannot love my enemies
because they keep crawling inside me
and tearing out all my emotions:
if I am made in your image then you
are not somebody I want to see
because why believe in the broken,
why depend on the weak,
why seek the lost and bewildered
whose only answer is “please”?”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“Words do not come back to me easily,
so I pull out my heart and wrap it
in a thin sheet of paper, let the blood
seep across in stanzas of honesty
and hand it to anyone who will take it
so that the still-beating heart can tell them
all my secrets, all my weaknesses,
because if they are not hidden
they cannot be taken and used against me.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“Some people unfold into a thousand words
and others never speak to me at all,
never take the blame at all,
never look at me at all – I wonder why
he never looks at me at all (perhaps
he cannot bear to meet my eyes).”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“When I wake from my nightmares
I’m more afraid of the breath in my lungs
than whatever might be chasing me.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“maybe you dismiss me as a nightmare
as I dismiss myself as broken, falling
into a thousand pieces that I gather up
and try in vain to fit together, but
I have no skin, I have no skin.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“I am still trying and trying to exorcise you
but you cling to me like mud or bloodstains,
like a battlefield fought in my imagination
every day that I raise my pen against the sword
you used to slice my heart into small, bitter pieces.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“I felt happier yesterday.
I do not feel happy today – I feel
abandoned and godless and broken
in a church built for the damned
with artificial light through stained glass
and warped wooden doors.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart

“But you are a god here in brokenness,
a bloody Eden born at your feet.”
― Miriam Joy, Broken Body Fragile Heart