Megan

“How there's no going back to whatever version of me existed before ... I read Marguerite Duras's account of a river and its current, a girl, a lover, a mother, of memory's weakness for women and gold lame heels. Or when I was woken up by the news and this planet's despairing chorus-how it dislocates the heart and coaxes cynics and makes a mass out of individuals. Or whatever version of me existed before I met that boy whom I loved for one winter and well into spring, when the magnolias in early bloom looked not just pink but elaborate, ambient, and grand, like my insides were seeable-flowering so forcefully, like nature cautioning me: Durga, this won't last.”
― Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays

“There are so many photos I’ve never seen and questions I do not ask, because seeing them and asking them, I worry, precipitates an end.”
― Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays

“It’s as though I miscarried all that glee we are entitled to in childhood.”
― Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays

“Flirtation –

After all, there’s no need
to say anything

at first. An orange, peeled
and quartered, flares

like a tulip on a wedgwood plate.
Anything can happen.

Outside the sun
has rolled up her rugs

and night strewn salt
across the sky. My heart

is humming a tune
I haven’t heard in years!

Quiet’s cool flesh–
let’s sniff and eat it.

There are ways
to make of the moment

a topiary
so the pleasure’s in

walking through.”
― Rita Dove