winnie

“I lack nothing I need unless you count everything I want”
― Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf

“I think,” Juna says after a pause, “that the thing about losing someone isn’t the loss but the absence of afterwards. D’you know what I mean? The endlessness of that.” She looks sideways at me and sniffs. “My friends were sad, people who knew my sister were sad, but everyone moves on after a month. It’s all they can manage. It doesn’t mean they weren’t sad, just that things keep going or something, I don’t know.” She rolls her shoulder, shakes her head. “It’s hard when you look up and realise that everyone’s moved off and left you in that place by yourself. Like they’ve all gone on and you’re there still, holding on to this person you’re supposed to let go of.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“When you’re young, you do so many things hoping to be noticed. The way you dress or stand, the music played loud enough to catch the attention of another person who might know a song, too. And then there are things you do as you step out into the world, the real world full of strange adults, testing out what it means to be generous or thoughtful. In that instant, before every memory was placed along some narrative arc, before the act of remembering took on a desperate air, I simply felt lucky enough to witness something so effortlessly kind - to see my friend do something that was good.”
― Hua Hsu, Stay True