Streets
Naomi Shihab Nye
A man leaves the world
and the streets he lived on
grow a little shorter.
One more window dark
in this city, the figs on his branches
will soften for birds.
If we stand quietly enough evenings
there grows a whole company of us
standing quietly together.
overhead loud grackles are claiming their trees
and the sky which sews and sews, tirelessly sewing,
drops her purple hem.
Each thing in its time, in its place,
it would be nice to think the same about people.
Some people do. They sleep completely,
waking refreshed. Others live in two worlds,
the lost and remembered.
They sleep twice, once for the one who is gone,
once for themselves. They dream thickly,
dream double, they wake from a dream
into another one, they walk the short streets
calling out names, and then they answer.
in shoe boxes
this kind of bird flies backward:
a personal diary formed entirely from
poetry & quotes
ask something
this kind of bird flies backward:
a personal diary formed entirely from
poetry & quotes
Forgive me.
When I feel myself falling out of love
with you, I turn the record of your laughter
over, reposition the needle.
I have imagined our children. Forgive me. I made up
the best parts of you. Forgive me. When you told me
to look for you on my wedding day, to pause
on the altar for the sound of your voice
before sinking myself into the pond of another
love, forgive me. I mistook it for a promise.
I envy you. Every moment
You can leave me.
I cannot
leave myself.
” Anna Świrszczyńska (via lambmilk)(Source: avdunstar, via pillowstars)
(Source: onlinecounsellingcollege, via sarahbethpo)
combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills,
will leave us like a love letter in a landfill,
but whatever, whenever, however this ends,
I want you to know that right now,
I love you forever.” Andrea Gibson, How It Ends
(Source: overdosage, via p0isoninmyveins)
Dear Floridians who are seeing Andrea Gibson this weekend:
I’m Jane, a 24 year old woman living in Orlando, FL, and I won’t be able to see her perform at either show this weekend. Will someone please tell her after the show that her full performance of The Nutritionist at Bradley University saves my life on a daily basis? That would be incredible and lovely of you. Really, it would. Really.
” inshoeboxesinterest when you are quiet
and small. Most things want to be
around other majestic things that make
noise or beauty. Wind plucks a flower
for sailing. You stand there in the presence
of whatever you are not.” Please Stand A While Longer In The Vast, Amazing Dark, Wendy Xu (via satiata)
of shadow I have brought back to you:
this decay, this hope, this mouth-
ful of dirt, this poetry.”
Margaret Atwood, from ‘Mushrooms’.
(Source: proustitute, via caveofhypnos)
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Vague as mist, I did not even know
I had been hit,
Or that you had gone clean through me –
To bury yourself at last in the heart of the god.
In my position, the right witchdoctor
Might have caught you in flight with his bare hands,
Tossed you, cooling, one hand to the other,
Godless, happy, quieted.
I managed
A wisp of your hair, your ring, your watch, your nightgown.
” Ted Hughes (via theliterariat)(Source: bakeed-alaska)
