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c31bfae
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It's the way I walk through the world, carrying that fear, that the beloved will go, will die, and that I will be the one to blame.
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fault
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Nick Flynn |
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d3ed4d2
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I've come to believe that the function of torture in our society is not about getting information, in spite of what we might want to believe. It is merely about power. It tells the world that there is now no limit to what we will do when we feel threatened.
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usa
torture
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Nick Flynn |
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ca7f761
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You do know, right, that between the no- longer & the still- to-come you are being continually tattooed, inked with the skulls of everyone you've ever loved--the you & the you & the you & the you--you don't sit in a chair, thumb through a binder, pick a design, it simply happens each time you bring your fingers to your face to inhale him back into you . . . tiny skulls, some of us are covered. You, love, could simply tattoo an open door, li..
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poem
tattoo
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Nick Flynn |
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e492b18
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When my grandmother comes to dinner at our house she always carries her own jar of Turner's Special Blend. She knows how much she needs and doesn't want to be caught short. My brother remembers her at Christmas one year, an especially weepy time for her, when she put her hands around his neck and murmured, My little angel, you wouldn't be so hard to kill. And though he knew it was only the whiskey talking, he also knew that the whiskey talk..
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Nick Flynn |
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f9d30f4
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But what of Ham? It didn't matter if he told anyone about his drunken father or not, if he chided him or tried to dress him, if he lifted his struggling body back into bed, if he took his hand and told him where to place his feet, none of this changed the fact of what he'd seen. It's possible he opened a door innocently, followed the sound of Noah's voice cursing God and the sky, possible he didn't even look, that he turned away before seei..
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father
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Nick Flynn |
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f8d5287
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My friend asked me if it had been cathartic, to write my memoir. I looked down at the sculptures--it was cathartic for me to look at them, but I could imagine it might have been hell to make them (I was cheered / when I came first to know / that there were flowers also / in hell). No, I answered--how was it for you to read it? Aristotle, in his Poetics, never promised catharsis for the makers of art, only for the audience.
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catharsis
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Nick Flynn |