damla

“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

“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

“I dance to breathe but often I dance until I’m breathless and sweaty and I can feel all of me, all those parts of me I can’t always feel, I don’t feel like I’m allowed to. It’s my space. I make a little world for myself, and I live.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

“Good person, bad person. Success, failure. Outside, inside. These are danceable truths. To be flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. That’s danceable too. But the work of my life has been to ask undanceable questions and find a way to make ballets out of them. There’s nothing to do with this dance but be still.”
― Meg Howrey, They're Going to Love You