Indigo Ryder

“My mother was in the hospital
& I didn't want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn't trust my father to be it. You always forget something, she said. even when
I do the list for you. Even then.”
― Chen Chen

“That was how I’d always imagined the surface of my heart—smooth, slick, unattached. Nothing to grab on to. Unscored. No one could attach to me once the inevitable heat of life bore down. I suspected the metaphor went deeper still—that I was afraid of marring my heart with the scoring that arose naturally between people, the inevitable bumping against other people’s desires, demands, pettiness, preferences, and all the quotidian negotiations that made up a relationship. Scoring was required for attachment, and my heart lacked the grooves.”
― Christie Tate, Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

“I confuse instinct for desire—isn’t bite also touch?”
― Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem

“Maybe the centipede in the cellar
knows with its many disgusting legs
why I am sad. No one else does.”
― Chen Chen