When The People You Are Closest To, Who May Even Know You More Than You Know Yourself, Call You Fearless

George Seferis, tr. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, from The Collected Poems 1924-1955; “And if the soul”

I seek a truth only a breadth away from mine

Fallen angels are only humans in disguise, reincarnated to follow a new purpose - heal others in order to heal yourself.

Julia de Burgos, tr. by Heather Rosario Sievert, from These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women; "Transmutation"

[Text ID: "To love you / I have detached the world from my shoulders, / and have remained desert in sea and star, / simple / like the light."]

I will learn strength in compassion, so perhaps I will begin with understanding myself.

I've been doing a lot of research recently into Cinderella as a cross-cultural tale and can't stop thinking about writing my own version. The story and the film has always been something close to me growing up, especially as somebody who also grew up in an abusive home environment. And it was also something I had in common with my mother. She had gone through the same but ended up hating the story. She rarely uses that word and only does so because she saw the story as a wish fulfillment, something that never comes true like a dream or fantasy. Her reality never turned out like that and as a historian who loves loves the early modern period, I can't help but agree. Marriage was a way out but that never turned out well for my mother. Reality is lost in the tale - maybe because there is a magic godmother with fairy powers, who knew - but it stood out to me because it was a story of a strong woman knowing her situation and looking out for the friends that she loved. The romance meant nothing to me when I was younger and still doesn't. But at the end of the day, it is a story that speaks of hope and wish fulfillment that, departing from various historical contexts, is contradictory of everyday life for the majority of modern people.

You walk with stars on your feet

trailing glory in your waking path

rosy fingers grazing smokey clouds to meet

the dawning skies above

   —  Anna Akhmatova, "The Sentence," from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

[text ID: Today I have so much to do: / I must kill memory once and for all, / I must turn my soul to stone, / I must learn to live again—]