aurora

“I've grown lean from eating only the past.”
― Jenny Xie, Eye Level: Poems

“We will not drink from the same cup -
Neither water nor sweet wine is ours,
We will not kiss as the sun goes up
Or gaze at the night, on the sill, for hours.
I breathe by the moon, you – by the sun”
― Anna Akhmatova

“Sandalwood"


The ash keeps dropping from the incense stick.

I keep turning you over in my mind.
I keep turning you over in my heart.

The stick shortens, burning.
The ash grows
and falls.

I keep turning you over.
I keep turning you.
I keep turning.

The ash keeps falling, piling up, more
of the silent reduction.

Burning earns such clean wages,
eye of ember, eye of ash hastening.

I keep turning your eyes over
to find your thoughts.
Turning your voice over
to find your meaning.
Turning your body over to find
a place to hide me.

And you keep turning inside me.”
― Li-Young Lee, The Undressing: Poems

“I cannot make speeches, Emma...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.”
― Jane Austen, Emma