“Autumn Window: A Night of Wind and Rain
The autumn flowers are dead, the leaves are sere;
Lamp-light comes soon, the nights grow long again.
Outside my window autumn’s signs appear
More dismal in the wind and rustling rain.
The rustling rain came in such swift downpour
It startled me from autumn-dream-filled sleep.
Now, in a muse, unable to sleep more,
I watch the candle at my bedside weep.
The candle weeps down to its socket low,
And my heart weeps and desolation feels.
Yet the same wind in other courts must blow;
The sound of rain through other windows steals.
The wind’s chill strikes through quilt and counterpane,
The rain drums like a mad clock in my ears,
All night, in whispering, monotone refrain,
Companion to my own swift-coursing tears.
The courtyard now with mist begins to fill,
The bamboo’s drip persists without a pause.
When will the wind cease and the rain be still,
That with its weeping soaks my window’s gauze?”
Source: The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 2: The Crab-Flower Club
“You turn me inside out, and then you want me outside in
You spin me all around, and then you ask me not to spin”
“No heartbreak can make a poet!
Poetry doesn’t stem from a broken heart
which fell apart
merely because someone left
and left a few marks to be felt,
dealt with and smelt
with emptiness and shallowness
of the breast.”
Source: Thoughts Between Life and Death
“As I sat there, my mind drifted back to the memories of our past, and the pain resurfaced, stinging my heart once again”
Source: Fallen in a Dark Uneven Way
“He tastes like lost dreams and a thousand sleepless nights. He tastes like young love and bitter heartbreak.”
Source: We Who Will Die
“Life carried me on its waves—from love into hate, and from hate into a love painfully reborn.”
Source: Love in Communism: A Young Woman's Adult Story
“Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot.”
Source: Go Tell it on the Mountain (Penguin Modern Classics) by James Baldwin (4-Oct-2001) Paperback
“If you break down like this, who would hold
all my broken pieces?”
Source: The Oath of Shakuni
“I promise I will
try my best to meet you again but…”
Shakuni was stopped as Arshi locked her lips with his. “Let’s seal
this promise for now,”
Source: The Oath of Shakuni
“I threw all the unwanted feelings
Into the jail you built over the years,
Out of my mind.
And when the time came to forget everything,
My heart laid to rest every sentence,
While my head revolted —
For there was no key to freedom.”
Source: Where the Quiet Blooms