Muse

For as long as I can remember I have loved words. I love them big and bold. Small and dainty, and everything in between.  Words strung together in a way that forces me to put the book down, catch my breath and ponder my entire existence. I am enthralled by strange, surprising ways to describe the everyday mysteries of our human experience. It is the same feeling I get when I eat warm bread or smell a fresh baby. Bliss. Here are some lines that have re-captured my heart strings lately: 

“It felt as if I was looking at myself and Makhosi and Father and my uncle Muzi and my other relatives, like my grandfather’s face was a folded fist and all our faces were collected like coins inside it.” -We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo

“We do this [write] because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning in it” – A House if My Own, Sandra Cisneros

“The sun will be hot again”- The Joys of Motherhood, Buchi Emeta

“Outside I see an eagle. It doesn’t tell me it’s name it wears it”- The Artists Way, Julian Cameron

“It’s light rain, the kind that just licks you.” -We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo

“I wanted to be like the perennials I helped Mama plant in her garden knowing that I’ll be reborn the next spring. I wanted to fall into the soil and then come back precious.”-Letter To My Future Daughter, Alana Brown-Davis

“Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.”― The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

“ I write poetry because it’s the only language the girl I carry inside speaks.”-Slut, Ukamaka Olisakwe

“We labor day and night to fill two small sacks in our chests with that which is everywhere available.”-Maya Angelou, Even The Stars Look Lonesome

“"Is that what shock means, that the air turns to glue?"- Chimamanda Adichie, Notes on Grief