Ash Kemp

“You may feel separated from the natural world, but just look at what you are. Look at how you live. You are not born to this place. You are born of this place.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“You can look at any human life as the sum of a complex collection of chemical reactions,
in much the same way as you can look at any beautiful painting as a simple collection of pigments,
Which is to say, you can miss the point of anything.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“come spring, come hell come collapse, come dusk, stretching tubers, stretching petals that wrap us in their future regardless of whether or not we’re breathing.”
― Tiffany Morris, Elegies of Rotting Stars

“But even as I proselytized to my bewildered family, even as I wore a sterling silver Jesus fish on my finger like an engagement ring, even as I listened to DC Talk and Jars of Clay, even as I prayed each night, I’m not sure I ever really believed. In a small town, the promises of religion are the language of protection, and I was being promised unconditional love—just as my body, and my very existence as a girl, had begun to betray me. Just as my desires had begun to consume me. Just as I was being taught to believe those desires were wrong, that they would mark me irreparably as both sinner and slut.”
― Melissa Faliveno, Tomboyland: Essays