Kim Sowol

When you leave,
weary of me,
without a word 

I shall gently let you go.

"What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness? or: The Monstrous Beauty of Medusa" by Jess Zimmermann

Medusa lost her beauty—or rather, it was taken from her. Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own: We are its stewards, not its beneficiaries. We tend it like a garden where we do not live.

Oh, but ugliness—ugliness is always yours. Almost everyone has some innate kernel of grotesquerie; even fashion models (I’ve heard) tend to look a bit strange and froggish in person, having been gifted with naturally level faces that pool light luminously instead of breaking it into shards. And everyone has the ability to mine their ugliness, to emphasize and magnify it, to distort even those parts of themselves that fall within acceptable bounds.

Where beauty is narrow and constrained, ugliness is an entire galaxy, a myriad of sparkling paths that lurch crazily away from the ideal. There are so few ways to look perfect, but there are thousands of ways to look monstrous, surprising, upsetting, outlandish, or odd. Thousands of stories to tell in dozens of languages: the languages of strong features or weak chins, the languages of garish makeup and weird haircuts and startling clothes, fat and bony and hairy languages, the languages of any kind of beauty that’s not white. Nose languages, eyebrow languages, piercing and tattoo languages, languages of blemish and birthmark and scar. When you give up trying to declare yourself acceptable, there are so many new things to say.

(full article here: https://catapult.co/stories/role-monsters-gorgons-medusa-women-beauty-ugliness)

Fortesa Latifi

all my grief says the same thing: 

this isn't how it's supposed to be.
this isn't how it's supposed to be.

and the world laughs,
holds my hope by the throat,
says: 

but this is how it is.

"An Archive of Feelings" by Ann Cvetkovich

Because trauma can be unspeakable and unrepresentable and 

because it is marked by forgetting and dissociation, 

it often seems to leave behind no records at all.

Dinner Mate, 2020

You know, our heart can be a step behind our brain.

"Mayday" by Crush ft. Joy

Tag des Hundes, 2020

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

I think we fucked, and maybe I should say make love, 

but maybe not because we didn't actually make love. 

It was sadder than that. We were sadder than that. 

But it wasn't bad and it wasn't wrong. It wasn't desperate. I think it was salvation.

"Before You Came" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Before you came, 

things were as they should be: 

the sky was the dead-end of sight, 

the road was just a road, wine merely wine. 

Now everything is like my heart, 

a color at the edge of blood: 

the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns, 

the gold when we meet, the season ablaze, 

the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames, 

and the black when you cover the earth 

with the coal of dead fires. 

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine? 

The sky is a shirt wet with tears, 

the road a vein about to break, 

and the glass of wine a mirror in which the sky, 

the road, the world keep changing. 

Don't leave now that you're here— 

Stay. So the world may become like itself again: 

so the sky may be the sky, 

the road a road, 

and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

"Gut Symmetries" by Jeanette Winterson

We looked at each other, 

afraid to speak, 

afraid to load our feelings into words 

in case the words cracked and split. 

I pinned my tongue to the roof of my mouth. 

Hold in, hold in, 

one crack and the wall is breached.

"Cecilia and the Satellite" by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness

Through all the things my eyes have seen
The best by far is you

For all the things my hands have held
The best by far is you

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tYya_LOPEw)

I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.
- "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf ||

I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.
- "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde ||

The enormity of my desire disgusts me.
- "The War of the Foxes" by Richard Siken ||

What if I'm someone I don't want around.
- "Falling" by Harry Styles ||

Hyena, 2020

Some people make me gag even though I try so hard to respect them.

"The Chaos of Stars" by Kiersten White

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 5 Stages of Loving You" by Abby S

i lost you to space and time,
i nearly lost you to fate

but we were always fighters,
and so i know you'll come back to me
i know you'll come home to me

and our devotion outstrips the fairy tales,
because we were never guaranteed a happy ending

when we crash back together
the world narrows down to the sound
of a single heartbeat


(full poem here: https://fireandsteelofangels.tumblr.com/post/163661863272/i-meeting-you-when-i-saw-you-the-world-didnt)

When My Love Blooms, 2020

Let's say that we miraculously meet again.
But I'm scared...
it might be at her funeral.

John Green

Maybe there's something
you're afraid to say,
or someone you're
afraid to love, or some-
where you're afraid
to go. It's gonna
hurt. It's gonna hurt
because it matters.

Hyena, 2020

Yoon Hee-Jae: My day was nothing compared to yours.
Jung Geum-Ja: Physical injuries recover quickly. Emotional inquiries don't.
              [Taps on his chest, near his heart]. It lasts quite a while.

"Graveyard" by Halsey -- Choreography by Noelle Marsh & Jade Chynoweth

"Transformations of the Lover" by Adonis

We bow, we meet, we pass or sit opposite each other.
You are my garments, and I am yours.
Our muscles tense.
Our skins taste like a violent sea.

[Adonis (2000):Transformations of the Lover. In: Adonis: The Pages of Day and Night (trans. Samuel Hazo).]

"Good Thing" by Zedd with Kehlani

Eleanor Russell

you are
wasting
your heart
on those
who do not
see it as art

(https://www.instagram.com/e.russellpoetry/)

Ivan Nuru

If it's out your hands,
it deserves freedom from your mind too.

Lost in Translation

Charlotte: I just don't know what I'm supposed to be.

Bob: You'll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want,
     the less you let things upset you.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNK7N3AwVFQ)

look. i don't think my stretch marks are beautiful. i don't think they're tiger stripes or natural tattooos. i don't think my acne is beautiful. i don't think the bags under my eyes are beautiful. i just think they're human. and i don't think i have to be beautiful all of the time in order to be accepted and loved and sucessful. i don't think every small detail of my outer appearence needs to be translated into prettiness.

(found here)

Paulo Coelho

I think it's important to realize you can miss something
but not want it back.

Dr. Seuss

I am weird, you are weird.
Everyone in this world is weird.
One day two people come together in mutual weirdness and fall in love.

Katherine Mansfield

You are now so fulfilled in your own being,
in being alive, in living, in aspiring towards
a greater sense of life and a deeper loving,

"Alles was ich hab" von Fynn Kliemann

Ich tausch
'n bisschen Mut
gegen tolle Aussicht
Und wie das geht?
Digga,
weiß ich auch nicht

Anhören: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrCQGEeasBQ
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAKG2osKm4E
(https://www.instagram.com/p/B-xS31LiOYk/)

"Noir" by Sunmi

Neil Strauss

Perhaps the biggest mistake I made in the past was that I believed love was about finding the right person. In reality, love is about becoming the right person. Don't look for the person you want to spend your life with. Become the person you want to spend your life with.

"The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman

Everybody has a secret world inside of them.
All of the people of the world,
I mean everybody.
No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside,
inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent,
wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds.
Not just one world.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands maybe.

American Animals, 2018

Man(n), ich will nicht, dass du irgendwann aufwachst,
in 10 Jahren oder so, und dich fragst,
was hätte passieren können und
wer du sein könntest.
 - Warren

~ Engl. Ver. ~
Man, I don't want you waking up,
10 years from now, wondering
what could have happened and
who you could have been.
 - Warren

American Animals, 2018

Hast du schon mal darüber nachgedacht,
wieso du so geboren wurdest, wie du bist?
Hier? Anstatt jemand anders zu sein?

Hast du schon mal das Gefühl gehabt, dass du
darauf wartest, dass etwas passiert? Du weißt aber
nicht auf was. Aber das.. wäre das Ereignis,
das dein Leben besonders macht.
 - Spencer


~ Engl. Ver. ~
You ever wonder, you ended being born you?
Here? And not someone else?

You ever feel like you're waiting for something to
happen? But you don't know what it is. But it is.. that
thing that could your life make special.
 - Spencer

"Therapist" by Mae Muller