Erin O'D

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”
― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”
― Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing

“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

“Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.”
― Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic