Benjamin Itner

“Who frightened you? Who hurt you?

Far too young to be protecting someone, yet that's the obvious answer: What's inside that little stupid twitch and dodge? Who taught you to do that? Why would you protect the person who hurt you? So they could do it again? Does that overwhelming selfdestroyed - what? Instinct? - at such a brand new age make any real fucking sense? Were you born this fucked up? How does all that fear soak down into those brittle bones that fucking quick?

They take care of you, don't they? They protect you. And you already know that there's nothing else outside? Nothing better? What else can you do? Is that it? There's so many more good hours than bad, aren't there? Warm times, I guess, when you play and when you show off to the audience that chose you.

You do what they say. And they haven't told you what's bad yet. Right? It doesn't hurt; really, does it? And all the time passes away so quickly. Into baby time. Into what you do whenever you want time.

No one really did hurt you, did they? Why would they want to? You're too pretty. too perfect, too valuable. Aren't you?”
― Peter Sotos, Tick

“O hour of all hours, the most bless'd upon earth,
Blessed hour of our dinners!
The land of his birth;
The face of his first love; the bills that he owes;
The twaddle of friends and the venom of foes;
The sermon he heard when to church he last went;
The money he borrow'd, the money he spent;—
All of these things, a man, I believe, may forget,
And not be the worse for forgetting; but yet
Never, never, oh never! earth's luckiest sinner
Hath unpunish'd forgotten the hour of his dinner!
Indigestion, that conscience of every bad stomach,
Shall relentlessly gnaw and pursue him with some ache
Or some pain; and trouble, remorseless, his best ease,
As the Furies once troubled the sleep of Orestes.

We may live without poetry, music, and art:
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books,—what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope,—what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love,—what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?”
― Owen Meredith, Lucile

“Is it not strange, that, as ye sung,
Seemed in mine ear a death-peal rung,
Such as in nunneries they toll
For some departing sister’s soul;
Say, what may this portend?”
Then first the Palmer silence broke,
(The livelong day he had not spoke)
“The death of a dear friend.”
― Sir Walter Scott

“...why was I hanging about with this child who walked beside me taking greedy licks at a big red sticky gobstopper while bursting into the odd skip and jump that was no longer the silly skipping of a carefree young creature, I’d ripped that carefreeness out from between your bones while I’d have liked nothing better than to preserve it, but you grew out of my clutches and into my heart’s desires, and I realised then that I’d never skipped as a little boy, I’d been born an adult and adults didn’t skip, they walked upright and in step, but with you, my prize animal, with you I did long to skip, you made me feel young, and I was certain things had been allowed to get this far because of my mother, she’d planted an insatiable longing in me, a permanent hurt that I tried to heal with you, hoping it would help me forget the cold years of my childhood, inside me there was a small needy boy who really wanted to play, who just wanted to have fun with you, but my suffocating lust got in the way; every time I smelled the soft sweet odour of your body I was transported to the far limits of my sanity, to my bliss, how could I resist?”
― Lucas Rijneveld, My Heavenly Favourite