Chloe

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“somebody/ anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself
to know you
but sing her rhythms
carin/ struggle/ hard times
sing her song of life
she's been dead so long
closed in silence so long
she doesn't know the sound
of her own voice
her infinite beauty
she's half-notes scattered
without rhythm/ no tune
sing her sighs
sing the song of her possibilities
sing a righteous gospel
let her be born
let her be born
& handled warmly.”
― Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf