VIVI ★

“They say if you want something bad enough you’ll end up making a god out of it. But what if all I ever wanted was my life, Ma?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“You're not a monster,' I said.
But I lied.
What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.
I read that parents suffering from PTSD are more likely to hit their children. Perhaps there is a monstrous origin to it, after all. Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war. To say processing a heartbeat is never as simple as the heart's task of saying yes yes yes to the body.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.”
― Shauna Barbosa, Cape Verdean Blues

“In this space right here
that we have made for each other,
you can say anything
and I will not abandon you.
Unwrap the worst things you have done.
Watch me hold them up to the light
and not even flinch.”
― Trista Mateer