Portfolio in Collaboration with Zak Krevitt for A Part Magazine
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“Kiss her. Slowly, take your time, there’s no place you’d rather be. Kiss her but not like you’re waiting for something else, like your hands beneath her shirt or her skirt or tangled up in her bra straps. Nothing like that. Kiss her like you’ve forgotten any other mouth that your mouth has ever touched. Kiss her with a curious childish delight. Laugh into her mouth, inhale her sighs. Kiss her until she moans. Kiss her with her face in your hands. Or your hands in her hair. Or pulling her closer at the waist. Kiss her like you want to take her dancing. Like you want to spin her into an open arena and watch her look at you like you’re the brightest thing she’s ever seen. Kiss her like she’s the brightest thing you’ve ever seen. Take your time. Kiss her like the first and only piece of chocolate you’re ever going to taste. Kiss her until she forgets how to count. Kiss her silent. Come away, ask her what 2+2 is and listen to her say your name in answer.”
— Azra.T “this is how you keep her”
“This is my box of twilight and inside flickers everything that disappeared when we weren’t looking,”
— C. T. Salazar, from “[This is my box of twilight and inside],” American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021)
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, RIlke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
Things you can add to a hand written letter:
- Stickers
- Pressed flowers
- Polaroids of you or anything you like
- Rings
- A recipe which you love to make
- Drawings or paintings
- Peoms or peotry
- Little notes with your doodling on that
- Heart-Shaped locket with or without your picture
- Bookmarks
- Handmade paper things like origami or heart-shaped rings
- Seeds of your favorite plants or flowers
“Dear friend,
— Your sweetness intimidates”
Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Sarah Tuckerman (January 1880)
. . . also, feel stupid in discussion; what the hell is tragedy? I am.
Sylvia Plath · The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
It seems to me that if I quit my job, I'll be making the six o'clock visit forever. I explain this to Fonny, and he says he understands, and, in fact, he does. But understanding doesn't help him at six o'clock. No matter what you understand, you can't help waiting: for your name to be called, to be taken from your cell and led downstairs. If you have visitors, or even if you have only one visitor, but that visitor is constant it means that someone outside cares about you. And this can get you through the night, into the day. No matter what you may understand, and really understand, and no matter what you may tell yourself, if no one comes to see you, you are in very bad trouble. And trouble, here, means danger.
James Baldwin · If Beale Street Could Talk (1974)
Paloma Elsesser by Dan Martensen for Vogue UK , October 2021
