Audrey Keer

“There once was a miller
with a daughter as lovely as a grape.
He told the king that she could
spin gold out of common straw.
The king summoned the girl
and locked her in a room full of straw
and told her to spin it into gold
or she would die like a criminal.
Poor grape with no one to pick.
Luscious and round and sleek.
Poor thing.
To die and never see Brooklyn.

(Rumpelstiltskin)”
― Anne Sexton, Transformations

“I feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. I am often questioning myself what I further want to do, who I further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. No answers, darling. At all.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“I became obsessed with Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls. Started collecting issues of the independence movement's weekly. Studied up on political game theory, an antidote to my spiritual reading. It made me feel like an outsider, which became my way of recharging. At the break of dawn, around six or seven like a nocturnal creature afraid of the light, I'd finally lay my head - which by then was spilling over with thoughts - down onto the comforter.
That's how it went when things were good.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“Probably I am a fool…most poets are fools…but for some reason I love faith, but have none.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters