Danielle

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Idols

You put her on a pedestal. Love her, adore her, crown her
as your queen. Then you watch and wait, for a slip, a split
second when her guard is down. You would tear her into
pieces just to claim a fragment of her story.
No one can be perfect all the time. Why do you expect her to
be any different? Why is she held to an impossible standard?
Why do you take it so personally when she contradicts the
version of herself that exists only in your head?
You think you know her, that she owes you somehow. That
her existence is only relative to yours. But she is her own
person. She lives and breathes, she hopes and dreams. She has
a life, a love, a family, a purpose. And she doesn’t owe anyone
a damn thing.”
― Lang Leav, Love Looks Pretty on You

“What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous