damla

“There was a time when all I wanted in the world was Bank Street. I didn’t call it that, I called it wanting to be a ballet dancer. I failed at both. But I’m not that girl anymore, and her dreams are no longer my dreams. Why should I feel like I failed her?
I’m not that girl anymore.
Oh, she’s still there.”
― Meg Howrey, They're Going to Love You

“You know what’s more terrible than giving up a dream?” he asks. “To discover you haven’t.
“It’s not about this boy,” James says. “You do see that?”
And then—
“Is it worth it? All this—” He shuts his eyes. “All this wreckage.”
I’m not sure what he means by wreckage. Himself ? His career? His relationship with my father?
Perhaps he only means life.”
― Meg Howrey, They're Going to Love You

“You’re like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, you can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic strum of a double bass the inert grace she has been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

“The land would never protest if the sea washed over it with what could not be called anything else but affection.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning