Ali Stinchfield

“When I looked closely,
I saw these souls stooped in much the same way.
The degree to which their bodies were bent
was in proportion to how much their backs bore.
and even he who seemed the most patient
Seemed to say, weeping, "I can bear no more.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“he no longer dreams of flight
but of a fall
that draws like lightning
a profile of infinity”
― Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems, 1956-1998

“I wonder if the emphasis might be placed differently, shifted from unconscious reaction to unrealized action: that is, our anxiety is less the mind shielding itself from death than the spirit's need to be.”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being