Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (via merulae)
You say prisoner, and you think of her: the girl whose veil smelled of wildflowers snatched by bone-fingers she clutches the grass and the earth bears stitches in the shape of her fingernails she clutches the grass and the earth screams. You say prisoner and you think of her: the cursed girl she has known death without having died. You say prisoner and you think of her: you think of him, soaking up what last breath of wheat still remained in her; the shadow of her collarbones as the sunshine dies on her skin. But you do not know: she kissed him first. Her lips have tasted death and you know she liked it. She fed the pomegranate to herself; she devoured every last seed until juice ran down her chin. He gives her sunshine and she does not want it. She rules death with fingers still pumping with heartbeat and when she laughs the Underworld shakes, and Hades with it. You say prisoner, she says queen.
persephone, you were never doomed. (via aarontveiits)
so my english teacher put up new posters in her class and
Sometimes we want our bodies to do a better job at showing the things that hurt us, the stories we keep inside us.
Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead (via ellacalm)
This absence. This emptiness. This hollowness. This nothingness. I feel them too much.
Sophia Carey (via wordsnquotes)
The excavation of the ancient city of Ur led by archeologist C. Leonard Woolley in Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq, 1934 [859x611]
mood
Requested! Mountain goat + Books + Bisexual (plus Doll Skin)
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
via @the-book-diaries