A rainy day: A pale, oversized sweater with embroidered flowers and vines on the collar of the button down underneath. Hair frizzy with the humidity, wrestled into a messy bun or left in a puffy cloud. Loose, comfortable tartan pants or skirt. Doc Martens or some other combat boots that can splash through puddles. Long trench coat. A dramatically oversized black umbrella, preferably with some sort of fancy handle.
Strolling through sunny streets: A jewel colored tank top or bralette under an oversized white button down, left unbuttoned and loose. High waisted tan shorts or cigarette pants with brown leather shoes. Hair is loose and overgrown after the cold months of not cutting it. Gold jewelry wrapped around fingers and throat in the shapes of arching branches, thick with flowers and thorns. A baker boy hat to keep loose hair pushed back.
The birds are singing: Flowing white linen skirt or pants. A billowy shirt or sweater in pale colors with ballooning sleeves. A silk bandana over the hair to keep it from fluttering, ticklish against the face. Or perhaps one of the first flowers tucked carefully behind one ear; it slips every so often, but every time fingers brush against it something light and airy ignites in the chest.
Not ready for summer: Making one last use of winter fashion before the heat forces it back into the closet. A black turtleneck and plaid skirt, but now without a heavy overcoat or warm leggings. Leather boots now used for splashing through puddles instead of snow piles. Dark green sweaters and skirts are getting worn especially, as they match both the new plants springing from between cobblestones and the evergreen trees that never left. Dramatic lipstick, red like freshly crushed fruit.
Perfect weather to pretend to be an archeologist: Something in all tan and white. A light brown sweater vest over a white cotton shirt with the sleeves pushed up haphazardly. Tan, high waisted palazzo or midi pants. Rich brown leather belt with a gold buckle that matches the comfortable shoes perfectly. Egyptian coins fashioned into earrings. Golden round glasses that keep slipping over the nose, only to be pushed back up again.
Picnic time: A loose, flowing midi dress with puff sleeves and a delicate floral print. Brown leather lace up boots. Hair in a long braid or up in a French twist, the comb covered in jeweled flowers or perhaps skulls. Rings on almost every finger, each one placed deliberately with an affirmation spoken softly on the lips: this one to protect, this one to offer insight, this one to help me remember. A picnic basket in one hand, worn leather satchel around the other shoulder filled with study materials to enjoy as deeply as the fresh fruit.
•omnia iam fient quae posse negabam - everything which I used to say could not happen, will happen now
•poeta nascitur, non fit - the poet is born, not made
•qui dedit benificium taceat; narrat qui accepit - let him who has done a good deed be silent; let him who has received it tell it
•saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit - often, it is not advantageous to know what will be
•sedit qui timuit ne non succederet - he who feared he would not succeed sat still
•si vis pacem, para bellum - if you want peace, prepare for war
•struit insidias lacrimis cum feminia plorat - when a woman weeps, she is setting traps with her tears
•sub rosa - under the rose
•trahimir omnes laudis studio - we are led on by our eagerness for praise
•urbem latericium invenit, marmoream reliquit - he found the city a city of bricks; he left it a city of marble
•ut incepit fidelis sic permanet - as loyal as she began, so she remains.
Planetary
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are there any poems you have on home, if its ok to ask? i feel homesick for a home beyond my reach and thought i could come to you.
“I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit.”
— Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home
“it’s as if I had to go back home on foot, alone, barefoot not knowing where far away, everybody else went long ago”
— Hélène Cixous, Hyperdream (tr. Beverly Bie Brahic)
“[ON LOSING LOVE]: This is the model I propose. You are arriving home and as you approach the garage you try to work your routine magic. Nothing happens; the doors remain closed. You do it again. Again nothing. At first puzzled, then anxious, then furious with disbelief, you sit in the driveway with the engine running; you sit there for weeks, months, for years, waiting for the doors to open. But you are in the wrong car, in front of the wrong garage, waiting outside the wrong house. One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart shaped.”
— Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters
— James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
“‘I’m homesick all the time,’ she said, still not looking at him. ‘I just don’t know where home is. There’s this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it’s like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.”
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon
“Wickedness has leaked into the home I made, / and I want to burn it down. Sister, tell me / how you stand the murderous fury. You there / still singing, I crave demolishing, to eat / explosives.”
— Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things; “Home Fires”
“At the core of all sighs is a name, a stone from the body’s last lost home.”
— Karen Solie, from “Days Inn,” Short Haul Engine
“To ask “Where is home?” as if there is one answer. To write home in a poem, like a poem could be a home—is this happy or sad?”
— Chen Chen, from “Craft Capsule: On Becoming a Pop Star, I Mean, a Poet”
“Feeling what we all feel: home is a forgotten recipe, a spice we can find nowhere, a taste we can never reproduce, exactly.”
— Richard Blanco, from “Mexican Almuerzo in New England”
— Ross Gay, from Bringing the Shovel Down; “Because”
“I want to ask was there ever one / moment when all of it relented, / when rain and ocean and their own / sense of home were revealed to them / as one and the same?”
— Eavan Boland, from In a Time of Violence
“I: Why not take the shorter way home. HT: There is no shorter way home.”
— Anne Carson, from Men in the Off Hours; “Interview with Hara Tamiki (1950)”
“I can’t get you out of my mind tonight; the corner of the sofa where you sat is haunted for me by your presence, the whole flat seems full of you.”
— Vita Sackville-West, from a letter to Virginia Woolf written c. November 1926 (via f-ridaas)
If you want to read a book but have trouble focusing, pretend you're reading it to your favorite character- or your favorite character is reading it to you.
~ Ocean Vuong, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous
Patiently waiting for hazy summer evenings