Clementine Con Radics Quotes & Sayings

I mean you ask me
not to fall in love with you
and then you go write poems
with your tongue
and draw constellations
in my freckles. — Clementine Von Radics

The good news is you survived. The bad news is you're hurt and no one can heal you but yourself. — Clementine Von Radics

Let it heal you. Lie beside a man who's hands you trust — Clementine Von Radics

I stopped going to therapy
because I knew my therapist was right
and I wanted to keep being wrong.
I wanted to keep my bad habits
like charms on a bracelet.
I did not want to be brave.
I think I like my brain best
in a bar fight with my heart.
I think I like myself a little broken.
I'm ok if that makes me less loved.
I like poetry better than therapy anyway.
The poems never judge me
for healing wrong. — Clementine Von Radics

It's just so strange.
You used to love me,
and now you're a stranger
who happens to know all
of my secrets. — Clementine Von Radics

God I want you
in some primal, wild way
animals want each other.
Untamed and full of teeth.
God I want you,
In some chaste, Victorian way.
A glimpse of your ankle
just kills me. — Clementine Von Radics

All of us need to stop apologizing for having been to hell and come back breathing — Clementine Von Radics

But my heart is an old house
(the kind my mother
grew up in)
hell to heat and cool
and faulty in the wiring
and though it's nice to look at
I have no business
inviting lovers in. — Clementine Von Radics

There is a river running through this city and every time my best friend laughs I want to grab him by the shoulders and shout Grow old with me and never kiss me on the mouth! I want to spend the next eighty years together, eating Doritos and riding bikes. — Clementine Von Radics

I stopped going to my therapist
Because I knew my therapist
was right, and I wanted
to keep being wrong. — Clementine Von Radics

I don't know why
I've got so much hope
pinned to someone who will never call me home. — Clementine Von Radics

What doesn't kill you leaves disfiguring scars
What doesn't kill you fills you with paralyzing self-hatred
What doesn't kill you makes you an unfit mother
What doesn't kill you makes it all so hard
What doesn't kill you wakes you up in the middle of the night
What doesn't kill you turns you into an alcoholic
What doesn't kill you makes you do unforgivable things to the people you love
What doesn't kill you makes you afraid for the rest of your life
What doesn't kill you might make you kill them — Clementine Von Radics

Apologies do not make good bandages. — Clementine Von Radics

When the poems don't come, don't open the vodka. — Clementine Von Radics

When will I sop belonging
to this hungry thing inside of me? — Clementine Von Radics

There Is A Lion In My Living Room
I feed it raw meat
so it does not hurt me.
It is a strange thing
to nourish what could kill you
in the hopes it does not kill you. — Clementine Von Radics

The day I bought my cane, I realized
I was through with the burden of feet. Instead,
I am going to become a mermaid.
I have always liked the ocean, the promise
of depth. I am tired of this dry world,
all of this dust and sickness, these barren fields.
I want to dive without drowning. I want to kiss sharks.
I want men to carve me into the bows of their ships
like a prayer, before I lure them into the depths
with my fishnet mouth. I want the beauty,
the gorgeous mutation, the fairytale of half body.
All the wisdom of a woman, without the failures of sex.
I am plunging. I am not coming up for air.
I do not want all this human,
my legs move like they resent being legs,
my body is wrecked by all this gravity.
I cannot face another morning waking up
with no hope of a fairytale. Here on land,
I am always drowning. Here on land,
I cannot move. — Clementine Von Radics

You are now 18
standing on the precipice,
trembling before your own greatness.

This is your call to leap.

There will always being those
who say you are too young and delicate
to make anything happen for yourself.
They don't see the part of you that smolders.
Don't let their doubting drown out
the sound of your own heartbeat.

You are the first drop of a hurricane.

Your bravery builds beyond you
You are needed by all the little girls
still living in secret, writing oceans
made of monsters and
throwing like lightening.

You don't need to grow up to find greatness.

You are stronger than the world
has ever believed you to be.
The world is waiting for you to set it on fire
Trust in yourself
and burn. — Clementine Von Radics

No, I'm not ok. But I haven't been ok since I was 11, maybe 12. I am still here though.
I'm still breathing. For me, sometimes, that will have to be enough. — Clementine Von Radics

I wonder if you know yet that you'll leave me. That you are a child playing with matches and I have a paper body. You will meet a girl with a softer voice and stronger arms and she will not have violent secrets or an affection for red wine or eyes that never stay dry. You will fall into her bed and I'll go back to spending Friday nights with boys who never learn my last name. — Clementine Von Radics

My battered heart will always be
where the ocean meets the sand, I
will break over and over
Every day. That is the best and
worst part of me. — Clementine Von Radics

I know
you and I
are not about poems or
other sentimental bullshit
but I have to tell you
even the way
you drink your coffee
knocks me the fuck out. — Clementine Von Radics

You told me mornings were the best time to break your own heart. So here I am, smoking your brand of cigarettes for the scent. I wonder if you still sing Beatles songs as you make coffee. You said your mother used to sing them to you when you couldn't sleep, nineteen years before we met, twenty before you moved your clothes out of our closet while I was at work. By the way, I hate you for leaving all the photographs on the fridge. Taking them down felt like peeling off new scabs, like slapping a sunburn. I spent so many nights carving your body into pillows, I can promise you nothing feels like sleeping with your arm around me and your breath in my ear. Still, it's comforting to know we sleep under the same moon, even if she's so much older when she gets to me. I like to imagine she's seen you sleeping and wants me to know you're doing well. — Clementine Von Radics

I want a tattoo of the first morning we woke up together. I want the memory to hurt. — Clementine Von Radics

If anyone else were to kiss me, all they would taste is your name. — Clementine Von Radics

Be merciful until you can't be.
Until you feel your heart begin to harden into a bullet.
Then use that bullet. — Clementine Von Radics

I cannot believe her when she says
I am beautiful. She cannot want me,
not the way I want her. My want
is an Empire State Building
I monster-climb with her
clutched in my fist. They make old,
flickering horror movies
about the way I look at her mouth. — Clementine Von Radics

There will always being those
who say you are too young and delicate
to make anything happen for yourself.
They don't see the part of you that smolders.
Don't let their doubting drown out the sound
of your own heartbeat. — Clementine Von Radics

He used to love me, and now he's just a stranger who happens to know all my secrets. — Clementine Von Radics

IV. There is a certain kind of girl who reads Lolita at fourteen and finds religion. I painted my eyes black and sucked barroom cherries to red my tongue. There was a boy who promised Judas really did love Jesus. I learned early every kiss and betrayal are up for interpretation. — Clementine Von Radics

Here's the truth: It is hard to be in love with someone who is in love with someone else. — Clementine Von Radics

I pity the woman who will love you
when I am done. She will show up
to your first date with a dustpan
and broom, ready to pick up all the pieces
I left you in. She will hear my name so often
it will begin to dig holes in her. That
is where doubt will grow. She will look
at your neck, your thin hips, your mouth,
wondering at the way I touched you.
She will make you all the promises I did
and some I never could. She will hear only
the terrible stories. How I drank. How I lied.
She will wonder (as I have) how someone
as wonderful as you could love a monster
like the woman who came before her. Still,
she will compete with my ghost.
She will understand why you do not look
in the back of closets. Why you are afraid
of what's under the bed. She will know
every corner of you is haunted
by me. — Clementine Von Radics