Anna Cf

“Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women"

Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quickness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.

Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was—
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?
I kneel once more,
in case mercy should come
in the nick of time.”
― Anne Sexton

“I am a collection of dismantled almosts.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“You who have inhabited me
in the deepest and most broken place,
are going, going”
― Anne Sexton

“On the face of her phone
Wileen programs a message to herself
so that when the alarm clock rings
the screen flashes:
EVERY DAY IS ONE DAY LESS.
EVERY DAY IS ONE DAY LESS.

For some people
happiness
it's just a reduction in suffering.

Jordan.
Jordan tattoos the words
FORGIVE ME
in thick black letters
down the inside of his arm
so that when he looks at his wrist
he will remember not to hate himself so much.

What he keeps forgetting
is that there is life after survival.”
― Buddy Wakefield