running home

tamsyn muir / plainwater: essays and poetry, anne carson / camp damascus, @drchucktingle / @grasslandgirl / temporary job, minnie bruce pratt / the stream of life, clarice lispector / mirror traps, hera lindsay bird / our curious position, charles bukowski / @heavensghost / @toli-a

[Image Description: Ten images of text.

1: Cream text on a dark brown background. “You were so afraid she might touch you. You were so afraid anyone might touch you. You had always been afraid of anyone touching you, and had not known your longing flinch was so obvious to those who tried it.”

2: “”I suppose you do love me, in your way,” I said to him one night close to dawn when we lay on the narrow bed. “And how else should I love you-in your way?” he asked. I am still thinking about that.”

3: A photo of a page of a book. “I’ve been plodding about through this journey like a disembodied spirit: no family, friends or community left to remind me I actually exist. I was starting to think that I might’ve just disappeared completely, a phantom in some endless loop of unfinished business.

But I’m not a ghost, and someone who knows that has finally caught sight of me. Whether or not I fully recognise him is inconsequential.”

4: “people notice and people care and they’ll help if you let them. (will you let them? will they try to help, next time? what id, one day, they don’t try?)”

5: “Leaving again. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be / grieving. The particulars of place lodged in me, / like this room I lived in for eleven days, / how I learned the way the sun laid its palm / over the side window in the morning, heavy / light, how I’ll never be held in that hand again.”

6: “I’m restless and harsh and / despairing. Although I do have / love inside me. I just don’t know / how to use love. Sometimes it / tears at my flesh, like barbs.”

7: “there is something wrong with you / there is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me” There is a lot of space between the two lines and they’re both highlighted in blue.

8: Black text on a pale green background. “I think of myself forever sitting upon the edge of the bed”

9: A photo of bright green bushes in the woods. A white subtitle at the bottom reads “You still have time to change”

10: “What’s that quote? There are only two kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” End ID.]