Marmota

“For too brief a moment in the universe the veil was lifted. The mysterious became known. Questions met answers somewhere behind the stars. Furrowed brows were smoothed and eyelids closed over long unblinking stares.

Your beloved occupied the cosmos. You awoke to sunrays and nestled down to sleep in moonlight. All life was a gift open to you and burgeoning for you. Choirs sang to harps and your feet moved to ancestral drumbeats. For you were sustaining and being sustained by the arms of your beloved.

Now the days stretch before you with the dryness and sameness of desert dunes. And in this season of grief we who love you have become invisible to you. Our words worry the empty air around you and you can sense no meaning in our speech.

Yet, we are here. We are still here. Our hearts ache to support you.

We are always loving you.

You are not alone.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225)”
― André Aciman

“Vivir en duelo es esto: nunca estar sola. Invisible pero patente de muchas formas, la presencia de los muertos nos acompaña en los minúsculos intersticios de los días. Por sobre el hombro, a un lado de la voz, en el eco de cada paso. Arriba de las ventanas, en el filo del horizonte, entre las sombras de los árboles. Siempre están allá y siempre están aquí, con y adentro de nosotros, y afuera, envolviéndonos con su calidez, protegiéndonos de la intemperie. Éste es el trabajo del duelo: reconocer su presencia, decirle que sí a su presencia. Siempre hay otros ojos viendo lo que veo e imaginar ese otro ángulo, imaginar lo que unos sentidos que no son los míos podrían apreciar a través de mis sentidos es, bien mirado, una definición puntual del amor. El duelo es el fin de la soledad.”
― Cristina Rivera Garza, El invencible verano de Liliana

“Sus palabras, como la música, tenían el potencial de ser infinitas.”
― Sarah Dessen, Keeping the Moon