Elaine Castillo, America Is Not The Heart Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Ijeoma Umebinyuo,

hunted by the narrative

hares on the mountain, traditional folk song // art by jen mazza

sparrow for a heart, abigal lappell // art by barbara bokoto-tomala

newcastle, traditional folk song // artist unknown

if i was a painter, lisa o'neill // art by claudia barbu

ashamed, deer tick // art by nicolas samori

i wish my baby was born, traditional folk song // artist unknown

hard wired, shakey graves // art by miles johnston

Joan Tierney Why Are You Haunted? / @/oceaii (tumblr) / Liv Ullmann Changing / The Elektra Complex / Rosario Castellanos Monologue of a Foreign Woman from "Meditation on the Threshold: A Bilingual Anthology of Poetry / unknown / @/violentcherries (tumblr) / @/nutnoce (tumblr) / Jean-Paul Sartre Nausea / unknown

i. Joan Tierney Why Are You Haunted? [ "This haunting is architectural. It is not about you. It is about where you are. There are bones in the foundation. This house is a graveyard. This house is a corpse. You are inside the corpse. That makes you the maggot." ]

ii. @/oceaii (tumblr) [ Black and white illustration of a deer. The deer looks forwards in the first panel and turns back to face the audience in the second panel. "Turn and face / the person you've become." ]

iii. Liv Ullmann Changing [ "I will never forget the loneliness I knew as a child. For a period in my life I hid behind a mask. Did not want to acknowledge any longing. / Now it is a part of me-something I can share. / Both the loneliness and the longing." ]

iv. The Elektra Complex [ "If you were to peel the skin of me apart as a fig's, you would finally understand. I am my mother's daughter. From poisoned seeds sprout poisoned fruits." ]

v. Rosario Castellanos Monologue of a Foreign Woman [ "I didn't want / to be the dead star / that uses borrowed light to survive." ]

vi. unknown [ Black and white illustration of two deer. They are both labeled with words. The deer in the background says "just be." The deer in the foreground replies "just being is the hardest part." ]

vii. @/violentcherries (tumblr) [ "the environment you are not thriving in is not yours forever / IT'S OKAY TO LEAVE / ... / IT'S OKAY to abandon the things you used to love" ]

viii. @/nutnoce (tumblr) [ Black and white illustration of a scorpion doing chores. It's tail just barely curls over the front of a clothes line. Various pairs of socks hang from the clothes line. It stands before a bucket with more clothes inside. "I come from the toughest, meanest place you can imagine. / I want to be gentle, I want to die gently, but / It seems that when life gets hard / I have to get harder to match." ]

ix. Jean-Paul Sartre Nausea [ "I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar." ]

x. unknown [ "1. Man is a MORAL animal. / 2. You can get human beings to do anything - IF you can convince them it is moral. / 3. You can convince human beings that anything is moral." ]

Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House

“In the evening my griefs come to me one by one. They tell me what I had hoped to forget. They perch on my shoulders like mourning doves. They are the color of light fading.”

— Linda Pastan, from “Old Woman,” The Five Stages of Grief ( W. W. Norton & Company, 1978)

Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz

a soft epilogue . 

she-ra and the princesses of power, nd stevenson / seventy years of sleep #4, nikka ursula (n.t). / cottage and wildlowers, hailey e. herrera / ireland, liza anne / sleeping in, leslie allen 

Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.

harrowhark nonagesimus and gideon nav

amal el-mohtar & max gladstone, this is how you lose the time war | hélène cixous, hyperdream | adolf hering, death and the maiden | paramore, all i wanted | tennessee williams, cat on a hot tin roof | lemony snicket, a series of unfortunate events | frank ocean, ivy | samantha shannon, the bone season | danez smith, acknowledgments

“i was a darkness in his bed sunless & shining like oil”

— – Safia Elhillo  (via pairedaeza)

night terrors by hannah green // how to cure a ghost by fariha róisín //writer in the dark - lorde // my mother & i - lucy dacus // take care: mothers, daughters, and inheriting self-hatred by ella wilson // lady bird (2017) // mother wound healing: why it’s crucial for women by bethany webster //don’t know // on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong // mother by maia baia