To Live In This Tragedy Without Raptures

“You want to know what it was like? It was like my whole life had a fever. Whole acres of me were on fire. The sun talked dirty in my ear all night. I couldn’t drive past a wheatfield without doing it violence. I couldn’t even look at a bridge. I used to go out in the brush sometimes, So far out there no one could hear me, And just burn. I felt all right then. I couldn’t hurt anyone else. I was just a pillar of fire. It wasn’t the burning so much as the loneliness. It wasn’t the loneliness so much as the fear of being alone. Christ look at you pouring from the rocks. You’re so cold you’re boiling over. You’ve got stars in your hair. I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you And never walk back out.”

— Nico Alvarado, “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls” (via cannedheaven)

The light is astounding, a hammer.

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

All the bells say: too late.

John Berryman, Dream Song 29

in that largeness of heart, that capacity for feeling and desire and passion, there's some kind of holiness.

Niall Williams, History of the Rain

Portrait Bust of a Woman (detail), Roman, Antonine Period, 140-150 AD

Photo by Erika Dufour

knuckle tats say FOUC AULT

Some of the first photographs ever taken inside the Lascaux caves (France, 1947).

Death wanted to be this beautiful but we buried it

Garous Abdolmalekian, Sea tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

the beauty’s really in the movement, in watching your mouth try to swallow despair.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

He's got all that mind, all that inner country he keeps going around in, mines and craters, caverns and dead ends.

Niall Williams, History of the Rain