“God, she had me by the throat, by the hip bone, by the moon. God, she hurt me with my own horns.”— Natalie Díaz, from The Cure for Melancholy Is to Take the Horn; Postcolonial Love Poem, 2020
“We all eat lies when our hearts are hungry.”— Unknown
Words to describe facial expressions
- Absent: preoccupied
- Agonized: as if in pain or tormented
- Alluring: attractive, in the sense of arousing desire
- Appealing: attractive, in the sense of encouraging goodwill and/or interest
- Beatific: blissful
- Black: angry or sad, or hostile
- Bleak: hopeless
- Blinking: surprise, or lack of concern
- Blithe: carefree, lighthearted, or heedlessly indifferent
- Brooding: anxious and gloomy
- Bug eyed: frightened or surprised
- Chagrined: humiliated or disappointed
- Cheeky: cocky, insolent
- Cheerless: sad
- Choleric: hot-tempered, irate
- Darkly: with depressed or malevolent feelings
- Deadpan: expressionless, to conceal emotion or heighten humor
- Despondent: depressed or discouraged
- Doleful: sad or afflicted
- Dour: stern or obstinate
- Dreamy: distracted by daydreaming or fantasizing
- Ecstatic: delighted or entranced
- Faint: cowardly, weak, or barely perceptible
- Fixed: concentrated or immobile
- Gazing: staring intently
- Glancing: staring briefly as if curious but evasive
- Glazed: expressionless due to fatigue or confusion
- Grim: fatalistic or pessimistic
- Grave: serious, expressing emotion due to loss or sadness
- Haunted: frightened, worried, or guilty
- Hopeless: depressed by a lack of encouragement or optimism
- Hostile: aggressively angry, intimidating, or resistant
- Hunted: tense as if worried about pursuit
- Jeering: insulting or mocking
- Languid: lazy or weak
- Leering: sexually suggestive
- Mild: easygoing
- Mischievous: annoyingly or maliciously playful
- Pained: affected with discomfort or pain
- Peering: with curiosity or suspicion
- Peeved: annoyed
- Pleading: seeking apology or assistance
- Quizzical: questioning or confused
- Radiant: bright, happy
- Sanguine: bloodthirsty, confident
- Sardonic: mocking
- Sour: unpleasant
- Sullen: resentful
- Vacant: blank or stupid looking
- Wan: pale, sickly
- Wary: cautious or cunning
- Wide eyed: frightened or surprised
- Withering: devastating
- Wrathful: indignant or vengeful
- Wry: twisted or crooked to express cleverness or a dark or ironic feeling
“How quickly jealous I become of the wind when it, and not I, gets the privilege of properly messing up your hair.”
Source: Tyler Knott Gregson (included in his chasers of the light anthology)
"There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will."
Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star (via quotefeeling)
and the truth is i have formed a really shitty habit of hiding behind ideas to shield myself of the reality of things. things meaning love. love meaning the coffee color of your eyes, the thickness of your eyelashes, the way you’re so sure of yourself you hardly think before you speak. and the truth is you seem so dangerously easy to fall in love with. and honestly, i want to take that risk but then again i don’t. i’m afraid i won’t be enough for you, or maybe i’ll be too much, because for all of my life i have hovered between the empty, haunting space between the two. sometimes i think i’m impossible to fall in love with because no one has really tried to love me. and i don’t mean the “good morning” text type of love, or the kissing at the right time type of love, or the asking if i have a snapchat type of love. no, i mean the drunk voicemails at 3am type of love, or the trace the moles on my arm like they are constellations in a bursting sky type of love, or the pouring your heart out when the words grow too large to hold inside type of love. i’ve been trying to convince myself that type of love is only for movie scenes and book protagonists but shit, i’d be lying if i said i don’t hope that someone would prove me wrong. there has to be something more out there than predictable dates or generic “i love you” texts or the exhausting cycle of getting to know someone and then having them leave without leaving anything more than bruises and memories. i have tried to drown the romantic in myself so many times but every time i lay eyes on you, or your name pops up on my phone, or you laugh in that loud, confident way of yours, it comes back up gasping for air. it keeps on begging for someone to help keep it afloat. and the truth is i’m so fucking tired of a cycle of almosts— as in, we almost worked out, we almost made it, i almost loved them, they almost fell in love with me. i’m tired of my fantasies meeting reality half way. i’m tired of mediocre kisses and fingertips that hold no electricity or love that holds no weight. and fuck, maybe we don’t have to last forever, maybe you don’t have to be the love of my life and maybe i don’t have to be the love of yours. maybe you can just show me something. something i haven’t seen before. something large, aching, real, fuck, something worth my time and my energy and my attention. maybe that’s all i need right now. maybe that’s all i ever wanted all along. and the truth is i have formed a really shitty habit of hiding behind ideas to shield myself of the reality of things. but i’m really tired of hiding. i’m willing to take the risk if that means i’ll save myself a single more moment about wondering what the reality of love feels like.
—- ap (12.18) teach me the reality of love because i am so tired of wondering what it feels like
“Your mind is programmable, if you’re not programming it, then someone else will program it for you.”— Jeremy Hammond
you don’t have to be more attractive. you don’t have to be attractive at all. you don’t have to attract anyone or anything. you are not a magnet, damn it. you should be you for you and only you. and yes I am talking about you and you and you.