I will be wild. I will be brutal. I will encircle you and conquer you. I will be more powerful than your boats and your swords and your blood lust. I will be inevitable.
Iphigenia, from A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky.
Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whiskey. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs.
Holly Black
She had been too busy trying to transform herself into the kind of person who doesn’t need anything from anybody, a wall of pure bricks. In the meantime, she had forgotten that when people walk into walls of bricks, they get hurt.
Unknown
I’ll swallow my blood before I swallow my pride.
Al Capone
Survivors have scars. Victims have graves.
Something that I need carved in my bones.
‘I hate myself pretty often.’ She tilted her face back on the pillow, damning tears and attempting to smile at the same time. 'Pretty fucking often.’
Jim Lynch, The Highest Tide
In truth, you like the pain. You like it because you believe you deserve it.
Marya Hornbacher
I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.
Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente
I AM WORDLESS
i am not a fucking piece of art
the freckles on my arms are not worth more or less
than the scars
your appreciation of my body
does not dictate how i feel in my own skin
if you call me beautiful
i will correct you
I AM DARK
AND BITTER
AND STRONG
LIKE COFFEE
but just because you added milk in the form of “beautiful”
does not make me any less of a fire
and i will burn you to the ground if you ever try to make me feel small
i am bursting out of my skin
and your ropes will not thread me back together once i implode
so back away before i spit your sentences back at you.
I am worth more than your words and twice as much as your hands.
“THIS POEM IS DESIGNED TO BE SHOUTED” -
R.R-P what doesn’t kill you
leaves scars
ruins your lungs
dries out all your tears
leaves you lying awake at 4 in the morning
wishing you weren’t alive