excerpt from "loud in the house of myself" - stacy pershall

[luckyzukky]

( content warning: eating disorders (anorexia), OCD )

(stacy pershall)
(source, chapter 6)

notes on "most days i want to live" - t. de los reyes, read a little poetry

[luckyzukky]

1.
Some days I am farther along. And by that I mean: showers, yay, and perhaps breakfast. Standing barefoot in the kitchen making coffee before walking slowly back to my desk, careful not to spill. Then it’s off to writing, or whatever it is I can do in order to make enough to live by.

2.
Some days I spill the coffee and I collapse to the floor in tears, wondering if I’ll ever be okay. And normal.

3.
Some days it’s suddenly seven in the evening, and I’ve forgotten to have a bath, and fuck where have the hours gone and why do my shoulders hurt from being hunched over and shit pain shoots up from my elbow to my wrist. I munch absent-mindedly on a stale cookie and realise only too late that it’s my breakfast, lunch, and dinner altogether.

4.
Some days I tell myself I’m really going to take out the garbage this time, and I do. I even take my meds.

5.
You tell me over and over: I fucking love you. I hug the words to my chest like a talisman. Then I pick myself up, and all the other selves still lying on the cold floor in all the other days. I let the echo of your words travel to the darkest corners of myself. I say to no one in particular: I’m going to make it. Because I have to. Because I want to.

(t. de los reyes, read a little poetry)
(source)

Most Days I Want to Live - Gabrielle Calvocoressi

[luckyzukky]

Not all days. But most days
I do. Most days the garden's
almost enough: little pink flowers
on the sage, even though
the man said we couldn't eat
it. Not this kind. And I said,
Then, gosh. What's the point?
The flowers themselves,
I suppose. The rain came
and then the hail came and my love
brought them in. Even tipped
over they look optimistic.
I know it's too late to envy
the flowers. That century's
over and done. And hope?
That's a jinx. But I did set them
right. I patted them a little.
And prayed for myself, which
is embarrassing to admit
in this day and age. But I did it.
Because no one was looking
or listening anyway.

(gabrielle calvocoressi)
(source)

quotes from "nightwood" - djuna barnes

[luckyzukky]

"Such a woman is the infected carrier of the past: before her the structure of our head and jaws ache—we feel that we could eat her, she who is eaten death returning, for only then do we put our face close to the blood on the lips of our forefathers." (chapter 2)

"Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them." (chapter 5)

"You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher." (chapter 5)

"'Once in the war I saw a dead horse that had been lying long against the ground. Time and the birds and its own last concentration had removed the body a great way from the head. As I looked upon that head, my memory weighed for the lost body; and because of that missing quantity even heavier hung that head along the ground. So love, when it has gone, taking time with it, leaves a memory of its weight.'" (chapter 7)

"There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?" (chapter 7)

(djuna barnes)
(source)

excerpt from "Begin By Telling" - Meg Remy

[luckyzukky]

I don't want to domesticate any animal. I simply dislike the yearly reminder of compound trauma. Being born on the hangover of America's Independence Day is to be born hyper-haunted.

I see your pain and wish I could banish it to the forest but I know that is not how trauma works and might we too be banishing the art? Heaven forbid. Jennifer often knows what to say when I'm off-centered. I hold the opposites in my hands and momentarily accept their equal weight. I feel myself level off: This will always hurt. This is temporary.

Soon enough me and the United States of America will be dust.

(meg remy)
(source)

Hickory Street, New Orleans - Yona Harvey

[luckyzukky]

Like, the last thing I said to you was let's buy a duplex,
like, you live on your side & I'll live on my side &
you'll rise when you rise & I'll rise when I rise &
I said something like, let's divide these hurts & regrets
& you get a stack & I get a stack & you walk a block
& I walk a block & you get a poodle & I get a pug
& you stub a toe & I twist an ankle & you get
a wheelbarrow & I get chickens glazed with rain
& you interrupt & I intercept & you call
the Congressman & I call the Mayor & you blow
a trumpet & I smash a tuba or maybe seal off all sound

sheltering the shuddering of the heart compressed

the high-pitched operas of trolley wheels breaking
at the edge of midnight where magnolias
shelter the stoplights & left-footed lovers, drunk
on beignets & champagne-kisses & maybe struck
by the distant drift of a giant
sea turtle floating toward a green wave
in a tacky, overpriced painting
& somehow they're safe, the couple is safe
& there's no parade stilts that will break, no stars
that will bend, there's just an orchid
tucked behind an ear & hours blurred together

& I said something

like—

& you said—

& I said—

Remember?

(yona harvey)
(source)

excerpt from "nightwood" - djuna barnes

[luckyzukky]

Look for the girls also in the toilets at night, and you will find them kneeling in that great secret confessional crying between tongues, the terrible excommunication:

'May you be damned to hell! May you die standing upright! May you be damned upward! May this be damned, terrible and damned spot! May it wither into the grin of the dead, may this draw back, low riding mouth in an empty snarl of the groin! May this be your torment, may this be your damnation! God damned me before you, and after me you shall be damned, kneeling and standing away till we vanish! For what do you know of me, man's meat? I'm an angel on all fours, with a child's feet behind me, seeking my people that have never been made, going down face foremost, drinking the waters of night at the water hole of the damned, and I go into the waters, up to my heart, the terrible waters! What do you know of me? May you pass from me, damned girl! Damned and betraying!'

(djuna barnes)
(source, chapter 5)

mushrooms - sylvia plath

[luckyzukky]

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

( Read more... )

(sylvia plath)
(source)

Sustenance - Eugenia Leigh

[luckyzukky]

Jesus said, Do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink. Or about your body,

what you will wear. So you cleared
your cupboards. Lay naked on the shelf

where I found you. I mistook you
for a loaf I had prayed for. You let me

take you in my mouth, and I binged
on your flesh. Both of us—unaware—

we should have prayed for love

instead of crumbs.            Still now, small

morsels of you

                               on my tongue.

(eugenia leigh)
(source)