round-up: 4/27

reading recs, quotations, tweets, etc.

Apr 27, 2024

Happy Saturday!

Here’s what I have for you today:

Housekeeping
What I’m reading
Quotations
Tweets

& a disclaimer, again: Things are mostly terrible right now, and the violence is appalling, and there are many people out there who have addressed and do address it better than I ever could, so I’m not getting on a soapbox here—this will just be your weekly round-up featuring what I’ve been reading and thinking through, like usual.

Things to read:

Housekeeping:

Happy Lesbian Visibility Week to all my girlies. Love you. I hope the world was kind to you this week.

dbouts

A post shared by @dbouts

I made this shirt and it’s for sale here.

What I’m reading:

Quotations:

Unable to take me in her mouth, she imitates my finger, our kitchen scene. This is what it is to be wanted. Loving her will be impossible. There is nothing I can do to stop it.

-K. Patrick

Above, the sky is a bruise.

-K. Patrick

We greet each other as we always have. At a distance. I want to move closer to her but don’t.

-K. Patrick

She reaches up and tries to loosen the Bible from my fist. It is playful, she is forced closer. Both of us have been looking for a way in. She does not let go, leans forward first, or we lean forward together, my memory has no chance.

-K. Patrick

All I have is the arch of her back.

-K. Patrick

Silence has such a violent quality.

-K. Patrick

Standing, she warms my hands between hers. My mind gone weak. I don’t want to return to it, my thinking.

-K. Patrick

Mrs. S brushes my side. Nothing is accidental anymore. I jolt. She does it again.

-K. Patrick

She wears sandals. The sweet pile of bones, its hesitation. She crosses one leg over the other. The hem of her jeans rides up. Her shin, like a mast, oh God.

-K. Patrick

Our time together is rare. I want it to be perfect, to always say the right thing, to be more like her.

-K. Patrick

All of her. I will have it.

-K. Patrick

I want her to be moved. The most painful desire of all, surely, to want somebody to be moved, to want to be so significant.

-K. Patrick

She makes herself into an offering.

-K. Patrick

She puts her lips a moment away from mine. I turn to water. Fast as the river.

-K. Patrick

Yes. Mrs. S kisses me. A new habit, before our lips touch, I echo her yes. What’s mine is hers. Yes, yes, yes.

-K. Patrick

Around her, when I am around her, there is no choice but to like myself. Even love, right now, I love myself.

-K. Patrick

I want to fuck among her things. I want to leave a trace, to be lodged in her memory, to have her see their bed and think of me.

-K. Patrick

No, that isn’t it either. There is no explaining, I do trust her and also trust is not the word here, not for this, how do I tell her I need to control perception, her perception, in order to stay intact.

-K. Patrick

Today the church bells are rehearsed, clumsy, a tune starts and then falters, chords hang in my teeth. Last minute I kiss each of her knees.

-K. Patrick

I say I love you. A minute’s silence. She is always grieving me.
-K. Patrick

I found her beautiful, the moment I met her, and there was nothing I could do. To resist, you mean? Yes. She was irresistible? Yes.

-K. Patrick

Love won’t leave. Is that how you know it is love?

-K. Patrick

The swim of her muscle. Pooling like water around the bone.

-K. Patrick

Her eyes close, as if she might sleep. I have never seen her sleep. I want it. Any chance to catch her vulnerable.
-K. Patrick

Water thumps the skylight like knuckles, thumps the ancient slate roof.

-K. Patrick

I bit my own tongue to stop it from touching hers.

-K. Patrick

There’s love, what I feel for her, but that’s not all. Love, so tight-lipped, so belonging to other people. Not us. It’s more, that shared mineral under the skin.

-K. Patrick

I have always known I would have to live without her. But the how, how I might do that, has not crossed my mind until now.

-K. Patrick

Haven’t I spent a lifetime separating my body from my mind? That is how I’ve survived.

-K. Patrick

Among the cul-de-sacs of modern coupledom is that the intimacy you once craved with a beloved also requires ongoing proximity to another needy human’s most jaggedly uncensored self, which is likely to be exactly what ends up putting you off them. Their deepest selves turn out to be rigid, angry, lying, and petty; they’re a bottomless well of hurt wrapped in sarcasm. There’s such a thing as getting to know someone too well, knowledge which can, of course, be weaponized.

-Laura Kipnis