if joy were a ship, grief would be its anchor.

i often think about the melancholy that lives inside of everything. without acknowledging the painful, it would be hard to appreciate the euphoric. to me, grief lives inside of every decision we make; for every decision casts another path aside -- there is no other way to keep going.

to be a woman is to feel an immense grief pressing in on you at all times. an unuttered wail at the injustices faced by me and my sisters, for centuries, for millennia. a great discontent at all the agonies we bury -- there is no other way to keep going.

grief? yes, i know her. she is wrapped around my mother's weary fingers. she rattles inside my bones.