Some Of The First Photographs Ever Taken Inside The Lascaux Caves (France, 1947).

I could feel his teeth, the inside of his mouth, the shape of his thighs, the texture of his skin. I reflected that there was very little difference between this reconstruction and a hallucination, between memory and madness.

Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

she taught me the poems of these death-facing women and I understood them to be my mothers.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

The world is slow to dissolve and leave us.

Matthea Harvey, Sad Little Breathing Machine

Remains of colour on temple columns.

I take the soil in

my clean fingers and to say

I weep is untrue, weep is too

musical a word. I heave

into the soil. You cannot die.

I just came to this life

again, alive in my silent way.

- Ada Limón, Invasive

Does the earth fill the mouths of the dead to stop them from describing what they've seen?

Garous Abdolmalekian, Long Poem of Loneliness tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

A great halo And a tightening in the throat

Dorota Chróścielewska, tr. Regina Grol

I would count the number of times we had made love. I felt that each time something new had been added to our relationship but that somehow this very accumulation of touching and pleasure would eventually draw us apart. We were burning up a capital of desire. What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time.

Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

we have / bartered away heaven, / in starry nights, in the apple / orchards of Paradise.

- Marina Tsvetaeva, We shall not escape Hell tr. Elaine Feinstein

I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.

Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind