Salma Deera Quotes

#1. love is just a synonym for absinthe.
absinthe is a synonym for 'i don't
know what i'm doing anymore.

Salma Deera

#2. in astronomy class, the muse urania angrily watches a panel of men talk about the wonders of the stars as though they created them.

Salma Deera

#3. when i love, it happens almost all at once.
it is inconsiderate, unrefined -
a child screeching in a supermarket
it's a thunderclap.
it is a small village blackout.
it is aphrodite rising from the sea foam, fully formed.

Salma Deera

#4. the centre of every poem is this:
i have loved you. i have had to deal with that.

Salma Deera

#5. i want to discover myself.
i want to destroy myself.
i want to be a secret that nobody but i can ruin.

Salma Deera

#6. My love translated sounds like a dead language.

Salma Deera

#7. Take back your rib, Eve cries.
I didn't want it. I never did. It is weighing me down.

Salma Deera

#8. but tell me, who was it that made you dangerous?

it was no one.

it was me.


it was everyone.

Salma Deera

#9. you are ares' lost sister.
goddess of sedated battles and lost girls.
always full of other people and never yourself.

Salma Deera

#10. it's like this:
say there's a whole room of people and you're somewhere in the middle of them all.
i walk in and i see you, but you don't suddenly become the only person in the room. god no. you become the room. you are the room.

Salma Deera

#11. but i want to ask her what is wrong with being dark and heavy
with your feet firmly on soil?

Salma Deera

#12. my curse is that i fall in love with
men who believe in gods but not in me.

Salma Deera

#13. in your dream, you are jealous of tragedies.
and the truth is, we all want our own tragedy,
because life is pale without it.
we want the teeth, the screaming.
the survival
that comes with it.

Salma Deera