Brie Danielle

“But who buries the hatchet
and who buries the bodies?
And who says they’re not
the same thing these days?”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“Your ribcage never meant to hurt you.
Your windpipe doesn’t know how to be pretty,
but she knows how to howl—
and here, I’d like to take a moment
to submit a formal apology to my soft parts
because they kept me warm
when I was trying to freeze to death,
and I hated them for it. An apology
for a starvation that went deeper than my skin.
One for the strongest skeleton I will ever own
and how I kept using the word girl against it.
Or how I turned words like beautiful into shapes
I could contort myself into. I didn’t mean
to compare myself to faces I can’t have.
Or spend years trying to carve myself,
like Michelangelo’s angels, from the marble—
forgetting what it is to be skin instead of stone.
I let myself be afraid. I was taught to be.
When you learn you are only as good
as your beauty routine, you forget
how to define yourself by anything else.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“This is the story of how I never stopped running. This is the story of how, when the wolves knocked, I met them at the door and I became the beast, instead.”
― Ashe Vernon, Belly of the Beast

“To whoever loves me next,

I’m sorry if I’m afraid of you
or if days of flirting turn to
radio silence, without warning.

I’m sorry if I make you say the words
over and over and over until I believe them.
(I’m sorry if I don’t believe them.)

I will probably spend more time
worrying about losing you than I spend
trying to keep you.
Trouble is,
every single time I’ve ever thought
something was too good to be true–
I’ve been right.

Understand,
I will know how to be vulnerable with you,
but I won’t know how not to regret it.
And I have no idea how deep we’ll be
into this relationship before I admit
I’ve never done this before.
Not really.
Not in any way that counts.

Before I admit that I know
how to put my body inside someone else’s
but not how to make it beautiful.

I probably won’t be easy to love.
Too many people loved me badly,
I’m not sure I know how
to do it right.”
― Ashe Vernon