Maiben

“For one second the woman and I seemed to become twins, or closer than twins, the same person together. Maybe we said nothing. Maybe we only lay in the band of sunlight that fell across our bed. Or maybe together we said, “There is great pain in all love, but we don’t care, it’s worth it.”
― Lewis Nordan, Music of the Swamp

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“Summer in the deep South is not only a season, a climate, it's a dimension. Floating in it, one must be either proud or submerged.”
― Eugene Walter, The Untidy Pilgrim

“It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency