Aindrila Pal

“Some loves never die.”
― Mark T. Sullivan, Beneath a Scarlet Sky

“If I can’t be your love,
then let me be a simple brooch
so I may rest a while against your chest.
If I can’t be your love,
then let me be a forgotten coin
so I may rest a while against your thigh.
If I can’t be your love,
then let me be an unlit cigarette
so I may rest a while in between your lips.
If I can’t be your love,
then let me at least remain in these words
so I may rest a while in your thoughts.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“She wants her cup of stars.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To be ‘a man of the crowd,’ or, conversely, alone with Nature or your god. To make your claims on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into its sublimity. To practice for death by feeling completely empty, but somehow still alive.

It’s a sensation that people have tried, in various times and places, to keep women from feeling. Many still try. You’ve been told a million times that to be alone and female and in public late at night is to court disaster, so it’s impossible to know if you’re being bold and free or stupid and self-destructive. And sometimes practicing for death is just practicing for death. As a teenager I liked to take baths in the dark with coins placed over my eyes.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts