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“If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“I tried to ask my parents to leave the room,
but not my life. It was very hard. Because the room was the size
of my life. Because my life was small.
[...]
Raising one’s voice in a small space
felt at once godlike & childish.”
― Chen Chen

“I had run away with her before, come as an exile to her home and stayed for love. Fools stay for love. I am a fool. I stayed in the army eight years because I loved someone. You’d think that would have been enough. I stayed too because I had nowhere else to go. I stay here by choice. That means a lot to me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“TALKING TO GOD ABOUT HEAVEN FROM THE BED OF A HEATHEN

You should know that although I miraculously
agreed to attend Bible camp one summer (my devoutly
pragmatic parents signed me up because the camp was free),
I don’t & have never believed in you. Yet here I am:
sitting up in bed, thinking about death, & needing
to talk to someone who (reportedly) has the inside story.
I know, though, that there are believers who don’t believe
out of fear solely. They actually love you. They reach out
& receive your touch. Like a friend, like a boyfriend, like the boy
beside me, overheating, reeking of sweat, & still (somehow)
asleep. I wish I could feel your warmth, as easily
as I feel his. But I don’t. I feel fear. I hear fear telling me I’m
a body, that’s all. & the boy I love is a body. & bodies die. No
other world, no return to this world in another form. (Annihilation.)
It isn’t that I didn’t think these were the facts before. It’s that now,
he’s here. I have to try harder. Believe the facts could be
at least a little wrong. Please, something. Some
magic, real as this ripe life with him.”
― Chen Chen