Michelle Risa

“ACID In Jakarta, among the venders of flowers and soft drinks, I saw a child with a hideous mouth, begging, and I knew the wound was made for a way to stay alive. What I gave him wouldn’t keep a dog alive. What he gave me from the brown coin of his sweating face was a look of cunning. I carry it like a bead of acid to remember how, once in a while, you can creep out of your own life and become someone else — an explosion in that nest of wires we call the imagination. I will never see him again, I suppose. But what of this rag, this shadow flung like a boy’s body into the walls of my mind, bleeding their sour taste — insult and anger, the great movers?”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“As a beauty I am not a star; There are others more handsome by far, But my face - I don’t mind it For I am behind it; It’s the people in front get the jar.”
― Douglas E. Harding, On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

“Understanding when to speak on an issue and when to listen and learn is an invaluable skill I continue to hone. At times, people treat me like an opinion vending machine, asking me what I think about their favorite television show or a politician running for office or a recent calamity, as if opinion writing is merely emotional utterance rather than a practice that requires care and consideration.”
― Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business

“I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work