Karen Green > Quotes

“Ultimately, the loss becomes immortal and hole is more familiar than tooth. The tongue worries the phantom root, the mind scans the heart's chambers to verify its emptiness. There is the thing itself and then there is the predicament of its cavity.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“I could love means I could die violently, or live violently; the threat of the arrow is everywhere at once, not just in the heart.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“I want him pissed off at politicians, ill at ease, trying to manipulate me into doing favors for him I would do anyway. I want him looking for his glasses, trying not to come, doing the dumb verb of journaling, getting spinach caught between canine and gum, berating my logorrhea, or my not staying mum. I don't want him at peace.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“Every view is peripheral now.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“I worry I broke your kneecaps when I cut you down. I keep hearing that sound. We fly from the world, right, like shrapnel angels, but why is everything so laden around here?

Your legs were elegant, and you crossed them elegantly, not like a boy pretending his jewels were too big.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“At least he
I want him pissed off at politicians, ill at ease, trying to manipulate me into doing favors for him I would do anyway. I want him looking for his glasses, trying not to come, doing the dumb verb of journaling, getting spinach caught between canine and gum, berating my logorrhea, or my not staying mum. I don't want him at peace.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“Imagine lying on ice and not being cold. We are all in corpse pose on the mats. What she really said was imagine a place of safety and peace.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“Home is where I take up such a tiny portion of the memory foam; home is a splintered word. His pillow is a sweat-stained map of an escape plot, also a map of love’s dear abandon. (When did he give way, at which breath?) Forgiveness may mean retrospectively abandoning the pillow and abandoning the photograph of someone with curious eyes, kissing my toes, poolside. I paint my toes Big Apple Red. I don’t know what to do about the shock of red nails on clean, white tiles except get used to it. (And when he gave way, was there room for feelings or the words for feeling?) While I brush my teeth, I can see him in my periphery at the other sink. The outline of him lulls and stings. (And when he gave way, was it the end of the beginning of suffering?) I draw his profile near, I make him brush his teeth with me, he spits and makes a mess. I could love another face, but why?”
― Karen Green

“I am supposed to buck up and celebrate a life”
― Karen Green, Bough Down

“The carrots got malformed as the earth was too hard for them, but still they were worthy.”
― Karen Green, Bough Down