“Still, I am very lonely… sometimes it shows up like a continent shifting into my chest. I’m so tired of being empty. I turned it inside out and wore it like a glove, smeared it on the walls until my house shouted empty, empty, empty. I didn’t know what to do with it afterward. All I know is that it hurts to be in the spaces between freedom.”

— Akwaeke Emezi, from Freshwater

Dan Zhu (Chinese, 1985) - The Train in the Rain (2016)

Krǎstova Vada, Sofia

(by Sketches of Sofia)

“But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro, in his Nobel prize (2017) acceptance speech.  

childhood friends are like open wounds

um seriously? like i haven’t seen you since i was seven and i love you with my whole heart. we stopped speaking because you hurt my feelings and i sometimes look at that bracelet we shared. there is no healing. there is no going back. there’s no knowing if they think about it as much. there is just nostalgia and aching when you walk past cherry trees

I love many people 
who don’t love me. 
I don’t actually know
if that is true. 
This is love. 
It is a mass of ice
melting. I can’t hold
it and I have nowhere
to put it down. 

— Molly Brodak, from “Molly Brodak”

“WHO CARES IF YOU DO OR DON’T. SOMEONE IS IN THE SUBWAY TALKING TO THEMSELF. TALKING ABOUT TALKING. TALKING ABOUT NOBODY LISTENING. WHO CARES IF YOU “MAKE” ART. WHAT IS “MAKING”? SEEING IS MAKING ONLY IF SOMEONE IS SEEING. THE PERSON IN THE SUBWAY IS SCREAMING, “NOBODY IS LISTENING,” BUT EVERYONE IS LISTENING AND SEEING AND MAKING AND BEING.”

-Keith Haring, Keith Haring Journals