Danielle

“I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

“Great cutting edge,
indifferent to tissue
Great stamping mass,
indifferent to the cry of crushed bones,
Grant us your hardness:
We would be as prompt to suffer
As you to inflict our suffering!

Light flashes out
from your whirling blades
Heads bow to the earth
before your harvesting:
Heads of grain, heads of men and women.
Grant us your hardness and bright surface.

Be with us in the hour of our processing.

- Hymn to Steel: for 5 million human voices”
― John Wain, Wildtrack

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?

Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?

The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay