elliot

“We are made by what we are asked to bear, Ling Chan,” he’d said.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“But I do love the world,” I whispered to the empty room. I love its small ones, the things beaten in the strangling surf the singing bird which falls and is not seen again, the lost ones, the failures of the world.”
― Loren Eiseley

“When I read these books, I no longer felt like I was confined to a very tiny world. I no longer felt housebound and bedbound. Really, I told myself, I was just brainbound. And this was not such a sorry state of affairs. My brain, with a little help from other people's brains, could take me to some pretty interesting places, and create all kinds of wonderful things. Despite its faults, my brain, I decided, was not the worst place in the world to be.”
― Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods

“My mouth is a fire escape.
The words coming out
don't care that they are naked.
There is something burning in here.

When it burns I hold my own shell to my ear,
listen for the parade from when I was seven,

when the man who played the bagpipes
wore a skirt.
He was from Scotland.
I wanted to move there.

Wanted my spine to be the spine
of an unpublished book,
my faith the first and last page.

The day my ribcage became monkey bars
for a girl hanging on my every word
they said, "You are not allowed to love her."
Tried to take me by the throat
to teach me, "You are not a boy."

I had to unlearn their prison speak,
refusing to make wishes on the star
on the sheriff's chest.

I started taking to the stars in the sky instead.
I said, "Tell me about the big bang."
The stars said, "It hurts to become.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase