Bohdi

“Did I want to be like him? Did I want to be him? Or did I just want to have him? Or are "being" and "having" thoroughly inaccurate verbs in the twisted skein of desire, where having someone's body to touch and being that someone we're longing to touch are one and the same, just opposite banks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to them again in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like the trapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomed drawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which the shortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we are and what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty of M.C. Escher.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I know it is my father's first time on this Earth, too. And I know He had it worse when he was little. But I was little too”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“I used to be a girl, Little Dog. You know?” “Okay, Grandma, I know—” But she wasn’t listening. “I used to put a flower in my hair and walk in the sun. After big rain, I walk in the sun. The flower I put on my ear. So wet, so cool.” Her eyes drifted from me. “It’s a stupid thing.” She shook her head. “Stupid thing. To be a girl.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous