That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough. — Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (Riverhead September 6, 2007)
And in the heart, born single as a kiss,Broods the sad other—learner, yearner, dier—That knows, uncomforted, its one desireWas not for this. — Rhina P. Espaillat, from “Falling,” Where Horizons Go (New Odyssey Press, 1998)
Even though I don’t ever plan on letting anyone hear it, I think about that poetry video from class… . I let the words shape themselves hard on my tongue. I let my hands pretend to be punctuation marks that slash, and point, and press in on each other. I let my body finally take… Continue reading Elizabeth Acevedo
Your silence furnishes a dark house. But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light. — Elizabeth Acevedo, from “In Translation,” The Poet X (HarperTeen, March 6, 2018)
But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in. — Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (Riverhead Books September 6, 2007)
The Vale of Soul-Making 