Özlem Köse

“Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”
― Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948-1984

“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”
― Erica Jong

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
― Anais Nin