Keely

“I was demolishing a lettuce leaf, my oval raspy-toothed mouth opening and closing like a flesh valve as I oozed along on my own self-generated glistening slime highway. The lovely green blur all around me, the lacework I was creating, the scent of chlorophyll, the juiciness—it was pure bliss. Live in the moment, humans are often told, but snails don’t need to be told. We’re in the moment all the time, and the moment is in us.”
― Margaret Atwood, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

“I opened my eyes: soft light, morning, cool. The shimmer of a dream as it departed. I have always enjoyed waking up to different weather, as if the world's been up to something in the night.”
― Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born?

“Despite I was tired, it was a comfort to stare at the red and brown stripes of the blanket in the lantern light and move my fingers along them. It was a steady, dependable task, as opposed to every other thing in my life at that moment, which was not currently steady.”
― Elizabeth Crook, The Madstone: A Novel

“A poem-shaped space, I thought. A poem-shaped space. I tried to hold a poem-shaped space in my mind. Sometimes the work of life is like preparing a bedroom for a guest: sweeping the floor, emptying the ash-tray, watering the sloping aloe plant. Opening the window wide to let new air in. I did all this inside my head, behind my eyes, while my fingers made words appear and waited for that guest to arrive.”
― Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born?