[I] tried to imagine what [my grandmother] was like as a girl. I had seen only a single photo from before she was married; already by then her eyes were those of a woman, an island in rolling ocean.
Dima Alzayat, from "Daughters of Manāt", Alligator & Other Stories
FLEABAG "1.06"
Tara Bray, from “Listen” / Tony Hoagland, from “Peaceful Transition”, What Narcissism Means to Me / Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God / Mary Oliver, “When I Am Among the Trees”, Devotions
What a polite baby
the lives they lived: jeff buckley; his father's son
Come here. Bring all of you. Your doubts, your worries, your insecurities, your highest goals, your brightest dreams, your darkest fears. Come lay your body on mine. Put your face in my neck and wrap your legs around mine. Entangle me in your love and affection. Sleep on me. Let me familiarize myself with the sound of your heart beating. Let my breaths match up with the beats of your heart. Hold me all night long. Wake up me in the middle of the night with kisses because you couldn’t sleep. Let me fall asleep to the sounds of you sleeping. Jump on me in the morning to wake up me laughing because you couldn’t wait to talk to me any longer. Lay in my arms and talk to me until all hours of the night about the universe, everything and nothing. Just come here.
i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.
most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.
it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.
and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).
i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.
grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.
list of things im handling well currently
1.
at the start of every month everyone reblogs some insane poetry that’s like “august has arrived and again I swallow my bones in the burning sun” and every time I’m like damn that makes no sense. but kind of true.