Bec

“In the Novel

He described her mouth as full of ashes.
So when he kissed her finally
he was thinking about ashes

and the blacker rim just below
the edge of the ashtray,
and the faint dark rim that outlined her lips,

and the lips themselves, at the limit
of another darkness, farther
and far more interior.

Then the way the red,
paling, just outside those lines
caught fire and the pages caught

soon after that. Slowly at first,
but then all at once
at the scalloped brown corners of each;

like the ruff of an offended and darkening bird,
extended, then folded
in on itself; multiple,

stiffening, gone.”
― Susan Stewart, The Hive: Poems

“The healing for women is not to be found in the quicksand of blame. The attitude of blame might lock us forever into the roles of passive prisoners, victims who have not assumed responsibility for our own lives.”
― Linda Schierse Leonard, The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship

“You came into my life-not as one comes to visit (you know, “not taking one’s hat off”) but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Vera

“the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.”
― Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche