the margin

"There are books in which the footnotes or comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin are more interesting than the text. The world is one of these books."

—George Santayana

the unrepeatables

"You are unrepeatable. There is a magic about you that is all your own."

—D.M. Dellinger

scrapsong (redux)

I saw you hang yourself to an end of a quote

some small fate that your books fall by my keep

and that smile before we spoke, almost always whispered:

I swore that the stars no longer rule.

you hold my world here, to see you writing yours

carved between stone and the length of sorrow

could I tell your greatest fear is that:

all of love is only borrowed.

the dreamers stand, on weight to move the water

or mistaken for the rust-less

secrets you won't know:

slow bird, so last, fierce.

—Ian William L.

both pursuit

"If it's both terrifying and amazing then you should definitely pursue it."

—Erada Khanmamedova

express domestic delivery

"My head swims, stupidly, drunk on a Monday morning on loose strings, spotproof and anger, a limp of silence. But for an old Asian lady, cloudily, trying to record the phrase "express domestic delivery", reading napalm on a businessman and how pretty those characters are, though, struck upon a folded page. Then the sky tasted, tarpaulin across the tips of my drifting synapses: how you become your own once-called empty armies, so long before, so you need.

So you need to do a headstand, or a crown of bone. You need an insect bite and to crush the insect between pulpy fingers and suck against acrid, acidsweet guilt. You need to sweat ice cubes, to think of rashes. You need, in scratched glass and soft lines, a message: I am so fucking wrong. All my kindness with shrapnel. All my labours of and, alien of love that, this is.

This is the morning wires, the way, one machination evenly and remote, a day, preternatural of broken timbers, skinned knees, little stones. I am gorged on the lightness."

—Ian William L.

the chaos of stars

"I didn’t fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny. But I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you—in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you."

—The Chaos of Stars; Kiersten White

the diary of frida kahlo

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world. But then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true, I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”

―The Diary of Frida Kahlo; Frida Kahlo

the seed, the soil

“I like to write. I like to choose the right word, I like to write the right sentence. It’s just like gardening or something. You put the seed into the soil at the right time, in the right place.”

—The Guardian; Haruki Murakami

fall on your knees

"Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we've never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I've been a sleep-walker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body. I've missed you all my life."

—Fall On Your Knees; Ann-Marie MacDonald

of literature

"When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young."

—Maya Angelou