merakiclouds

[merakiclouds]

i’m not easy to love, i know, i know, i know

1. Kim Addonizio | 2. yves olade | 3. @titsay | 4. Chelsea Carr | 5. l.m. dorsey | 6. @asoftwrongness | 7. nicole homer | 8. daughter | 9. downeaster

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"But my anxious heart is eating up my body, eating up my nerves, eating up my brain. I feel this poison slowly filling my veins – every particle becoming slowly tainted.... I am never, never calm, never for an instant."

Katherine Mansfield, from "The Diaries Of Katherine Mansfield"

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ON MONSTERS AND THEIR LORE KEEPERS

1. the long and short of it, richard siken, 2. gretel, from a sudden clearing, marie howe, 3. goldrush, taylor swift 4. the nyt book review (1957), isak dinesen, 5. start here, caitlyn siehl

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1. lolita, vladmir nabokov / 2, 10. cardigan, taylor swift / 3. @fionaapplearthistory (love’s shadow, frederick sandys + paper bag, fiona apple) / 4, 7. never is a promise, fiona apple / 6. all too well (ten minute version) music video, taylor swift / 8. slow like honey, fiona apple / 9. the virgin suicides, sofia coppola

i find it so funny when men underestimate my intelligence simply because i’m a teenage girl.…little do they know that i’m smart not in spite of being a girl, but rather because of it. years before the boys have to, society forces us girls to analyze and introspect on our existences in a world that both hates and fetishizes us. we have to grow up fast, we have to look critically at anything and everything — otherwise we wouldn’t survive.

girls are so much more insightful and wise and self-aware than men could ever imagine. they just can’t understand us, and that’s why they hate us, mock us, belittle our passions and ideas. they fear us and *our* big secret — what we know that they can’t.

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― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

[text ID: Girl, aging girl, is haunted by own nothingness...]

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i was sixteen for twenty years

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Lost Girlhood and the Photography of Justine Kurland

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte / “Forest”, Justine Kurland / “Touch Up”, Mother Mother / “Candy Toss,” Justine Kurland / bunnyhauntingthedollshouse / “Poison Ivy”, Justine Kurland / “seven”, Taylor Swift / “Kung Fu Fighters”, Justine Kurland

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Su Xinyu

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Women and Emptiness

Audrey Wollen, Girls Own The Void | unknown source | William Shakespeare, King Lear | Rebecca Horn, Two Hands Scratching Both Walls | Mitski, Crack Baby | Grigori Kromanov, The Last Relic | Fiona Apple, Sullen Girl | Catherine Bertola, Residual Hauntings

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“Being born a woman is an awful tragedy…yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”

“The Female Man” - Joanna Russ // “The Robber’s Bride” - Margaret Atwood // “Gone Girl” - Gillian Flynn // “Ways of Seeing” - John Berger // “The Female Man” - Joanna Russ // Sylvia Plath

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it’s an unspoken thing between all of us- the grief of all the friends you never got to say goodbye to. like, the friends youd make in science class because the teacher sat you next to one another, the friends from your childhood who you mightve only spoken to in school, but whose existence sunk its teeth into you and left a permanent mark. even the ones you were closest to, the ones you called best friend for a time, somewhere along the way you parted without even noticing it. somewhere along the way, you played outside for the last time, shared food for the last time, stayed up talking for the last time, said i love you for the last time. when was the last time? we didnt decide to stop being friends. we didnt even say goodbye. but ‘see you next week’ turned into ‘it’s been a long time’, and now, if you saw each other in the street, you might pretend that you didnt. you might not even recognise them. they might not even recognise you. you can’t remember the shape of their nose. and what about the connections you made online when you were a child, playing games that meant so little with nameless friends that meant so much? or when you were a bit older, talking to strangers but loving them like family? here, raise a glass to the friends who disappeared one day, who deactivated, who stopped messaging you back, because online friends can bring you just as much joy as real life ones, too. when the adults told you dont talk to strangers, they didnt consider the good morning! :) texts, the have you eaten today? texts, the trying to hold in your laughter at 3am texts, the i wish timezones and continents and countries didnt exist so i could hug you texts, the little pieces of a persons heart texts, blue light flooding across the world just to say i love you. sleep well. i love you. i love you. the grief comes in waves. it’s slow, and soft, and steady- you dont notice it pooling around your ankles at first, you dont want to- but it comes. childhood is where the grief begins. it’s reared like a well-loved pet, a hungry mouth under the tablecloth. a passing thought from time to time, when you remember the girl you befriended a long long time ago, and when you wonder where she went. it doesn’t feel like much at first. it doesn’t break you yet. it’s not like real grief, not like anyone died, but you had something in your hand and now it’s empty and you can’t remember where you put it. it’s like that, except the thing in your hand was a person who loved you, once. a person whose face you couldn’t draw if the world got on its knees and begged you. when you dont get to say goodbye to someone, your memory becomes a funeral, every conversation you ever shared with them a eulogy. because this is how the story goes. i had a friend. this is not a poem. i had a friend.

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Do revenge (2022), Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

Black Iris, Leah Raeder//I Will Tell this Story to the Sun Until You Remember that You are the Sun, Erin Slaughter//1Q84, Haruki Murakami//Mirror Traps, Hera Lindsay Bird//Hanif Abdurraqib//Boyish, Japanese Breakfast//Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson

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—girlhood

girlhood by stevie edwards // mauvais gout // sour girl by jenny zhang // image from pinterest // churching by k-ming chang // ron hicks // reviving ophelia by mary pipher // ? // nailone on deviantart // brand new city by mitski

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Web weave about boyhood & how gentle boys grow up to be cruel men?

Orson Scott Card, The Princess and the Bear

Mario Puzo, The Godfather

George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

Skyfall (2012) dir. Sam Mendes

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M*A*S*H, the 4077 (hawkeye ver)

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as something holy

Danez Smith, The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar

Jorge Luis Borges, The Meeting in a Dream

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

Hozier, Take Me to Church

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

John Keats in a letter to Fanny Brawne, c. October 1819

Tosca, Ho Amato Tutto (trans. from Italian)

Richard Siken, Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

Lord Alfred Douglas, Two Loves

Zolita, Holy

Ethel Cain, Sun Bleached Flies / @toothachebench​

Mabel (2016–), Episode 22: Eternal Return

Fall Out Boy, Church

Sarah Kane, Phaedra’s Love

Sappho (attrib.)

Richard Siken, Saying Your Names

Dante Émile, After Abel

Mary Lambert, She Keeps Me Warm

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Natalie Diaz, These Hands, If Not Gods

Danez Smith, The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar

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Flame Snyder

Jane Austen - "Sense and Sensibility" / Mary Oliver Wild Geese / Casey McQuiston - Red, White & Royal Blue / My art I made in 5 minutes that turned out way too pretty / Sylvia Plath - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath / Lyndsey Gallant / ? / @/heavensghost on tumblr

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