eesha

“He needed to tell her...what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn't pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he'd begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near. He needed to thank her for his new hat.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
― Warsan Shire

“How am I supposed to know?” she asked instead. “What’s it supposed to be like?”

Lana and Claire traded tiny smiles, and Claire asked gently, “What’s what supposed to be like?”

Lily slumped back against the sofa, feeling boneless and muddled. “Falling in love, I guess.”

“You’ll know,” Claire said. “It’s unmistakable.”

(How she could recognize Kath at the other end of a crowded Galileo hallway by the way she walked.)

“It’s like . . . well, it’s like falling,” Lana said. “Falling, or floating, or sinking.”

(Every time they kissed.)

“You won’t know which way is up.”

“It’s like having a fever.”

(The way the world seemed to narrow down to the tips of Kath’s fingers.)

“It’s like being drunk—drunk for days.”
― Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

“The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase