Dafna

“There are no easy ways to speak these words. No way to honor love and truth without something getting lost in translation. It is made even more complex when one party is dead, silent to this world. And how do you tell a story that is commonplace and felt by all without giving in to sentimentality? But the thing is that, in the end, we each must decide how comfortable we are with how much we hurt other people.”
― Chris Abani, The Face: Cartography of the Void

“Your days still half-opened, crackle like the fires to come. Outside. The earth. Wind. Night. Unfold for you. Listen to their sounds. They have sung me seasons that never abandoned me.”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“How to dance
in blood and
remain sane?”
― Sonia Sanchez, Morning Haiku

“Sissie could see it all. In her uncertain eyes, on her restless hands and on her lips, which she kept biting all the time.
But oh, her skin. It seemed as if according to the motion of her emotions Marija's skin kept switching on and switching off like a two-colour neon sign. So that watching her against the light of the dying summer sun, Sissie could not help thinking that it must be a pretty dangerous matter, being white. It made you feel awfully exposed, rendered you terribly vulnerable. Like being born without your skin or something. As though the Maker had fashioned the body of a human, stuffed it into a polythene bag instead of the regular protective covering, and turned it loose into the world.

Lord, she wondered, is that why, on the whole, they have had to be extra ferocious? Is it so they could feel safe here on the earth, under the sun, the moon and the stars?”
― Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy