Quotes added on Saturday, July 25 2015

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I’m afraid
I might kill myself
if I don’t wear it

you’ve been wearing it
every day since we met he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don’t set fire to something?
he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I’d like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I’m wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don’t get any ideas
and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door

                  -- "What She Was Wearing" Denver Butson

does it really get better?


or do we just get used to it?

       in this world       
  love has no color—  
       yet how deeply      
         my body               
    is stained by yours   
      -- Izumi Shikibu     

When we say I
  miss you what  
  we mean is I’m  
  filled with         

  dread. At night 
  alone going    
  to bed is         

  like lying down  
  in a wave. Total  
  absence of light.  
  Swept away to  
  gone.  
         -- "Swept"

I tell you, even rocks crack,
and not because of age.
For years they lie on their backs
in the heat and the cold,
so many years,
it seems peaceful. 
They don’t move, so the cracks stay hidden.
A kind of pride.
Years pass over them, waiting there.
Whoever is going to shatter them 
hasn’t come yet.
And so the moss flourishes, the seaweed whips around,
the sea pushes through and rolls back—
the rocks seem motionless.
And suddenly the rock has an open wound.
I told you, when rocks break, it happens by surprise.
And people, too.
                                      -- Dahlia Ravikovitch