I took all my love for you and buried it away. A rose plant grew on its grave. Though now it’s not the roses that bloom for you, but the thorns that carry your name.
“How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives.”
“All my teenage years, I had bottled up anger and grief and promised myself I’d never cry but when I sat down with her hands in my hand and looked her in the eye, all the anger turned into tears. I sobbed for hours and she sat there, rubbing my back. That’s when I saw. Growing up is also tearing down walls, it’s also letting go of the anger.”
Jeanette Winterson, from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
[Text ID: ‘And what if I stay?’ ‘You will find yourself destroyed by grief. All you know will be around you, and at the same time far from you. Better to find a new place now.’]
“It is men, men who
harm me with their weapons.
Men I mothered
without birthing, wife without
fulfillment of the flesh, sister without brothers,
daughter without rebelliousness. It is the men and only them,
made of better clay than mine,
whose greed was greater
than the need to hold on to me. I was sold at least,
because I became so worthy in their accounts,
that I was of no worth for their tenderness.
And if for tenderness I’m unworthy, then I’m worth nothing…
And it’s time to die.”
— Dulce María Loynaz, from These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women; “Last days of home”
