Shatha

“You sense my loneliness, (...) my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I'm evil, that I don't deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don't stop me, Mother. I'm too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that's all”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“و لمَّا تَلاقينا على ســـــــفحِ رامَةٍ ** وجدتُ بـنان الـــــــعامريَّةِ أحــمرا
فقلتُ خضبتِ الكفَّ على فراقنا؟! ** فقالت : معاذ الله , ذلك ما جرى
ولكنَّنِــــــي لـــــــما وجدتُكَ راحلاً ** بكيتُ دماً حتى بللــت به الـثرى
مسحت بأطراف البنانِ مدامعي ** فصار خضاباً في اليدين كــما ترى”
― قيس بن الملوح

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar