Said Lord please give me what I need
He said there's pain and misery
Oh sweet oblivion feels alrightSubmitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 10:09 — burgundybabe
Link to full quote: Quote #2472 from Shadow of the Season by Screaming Trees
VI
Let me start again, here,
where a woman ends.
The wrists were involved.
Also the leg-tops, the delicate skin
of the inner arms,
anywhere she could drag a sharpness
that factors in and out
what she could not change in her life
which was pain.
The steel ratio of pain
to power
being control.
VII
Now ask yourself, as I did,
why hurt yourself more?Submitted on Thu, 2010-02-04 09:32 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2467 from Cuttings by Dorothy Barresi
Postscript.
Sometimes she would cut herself, then go next door
to the neighbor's house --
a drywall finisher out of work
because this was the recession --
and present her arms to him
shyly, like a girl
in her first prom gown of ruched sateen,
awkward in bows
but with terribly alert eyes.Submitted on Thu, 2010-02-04 09:28 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2466 from Cuttings by Dorothy Barresi
Ask the girl with the dirt in her mouth.
Ask the girl who is all poem
now, all shapes between the shapes
she carved into her flesh
like a tattoo artist falling in love.
with what remains un-inked, the border crossings
and blue edges
and the razor bleeding
in her hand.Submitted on Thu, 2010-02-04 09:25 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2465 from Cuttings by Dorothy Barresi
Discomfort is worse than a wound. At least you know where you are with blood. At least other people can see it.
Submitted on Fri, 2009-12-25 20:25 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2424 from Thin Skin by Emma Forrest
My thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that comes close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines.
Submitted on Fri, 2009-12-25 20:23 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2423 from Thin Skin by Emma Forrest
Why? You want to know why?
Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.
Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all, "a disappointment." Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and drink and cut because you need the anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop.
Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is wrong with you.
"Why?" is the wrong question.
Ask "Why not?"
Submitted on Sat, 2009-10-10 07:19 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2381 from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Used to be that my whole body was my canvas—hot cuts licking my ribs, ladder rungs climbing my arms, thick milkweed stalks shooting up my thighs. . . .
Submitted on Sat, 2009-10-10 07:09 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2380 from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
The bathroom door swings open. Emma sees the blood painting my skin and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The screams of my little sister shatter mirrors.
Submitted on Sat, 2009-10-10 07:06 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2379 from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds.
Submitted on Sat, 2009-10-10 06:45 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2378 from Skin Game: A Memoir by Caroline Kettlewell
