Tell No One

Posted on 20th February 2026 Posted in PersonalTagged abandonment, art, book, books, contemporary literature, depression, feelings, grief, heart, heartbreak, isolation, Life, life writing, literature, loneliness, longing, love, sadness23 Comments

There’s too much loneliness in this world, and around me. If only I could slice up my heart real nice and evenly, I would share it with everyone I knew so they would feel less lonely.

I would tell Father, I’d always be around and he could have all of me. I would tell Grampy, I was proud to have his eyes and his kindness. His wisdom ran in my blood. I would tell brother, he could share with me his love for Mother and the burden of existence never have to fall on his shoulder, I would carry it with him.

I have so much loneliness in me, so much more than I could bear. Mother gave it to me one night the first time she was standing on the ledge near the window in our thirty stories high three bedrooms flat. She was in love with heights, so every night she took the dragons out and played with them outside by the window. She’d learn to fly. And fall.

I got so lonely every time she did, for this grave feeling seeping through my skin, that she would fly (or fall) and would never find her way back to me (and Father). She had certain ways of seeing life and death. Most of the time, to her there was no difference in both. But at times she saw death as a release, and life was a cage in which one could only see what was not and could never feel what was real. What was real she saw in dreams.

She shared these dreams with me. She wrote them in a diary. Tell no one, she said to me.

In her dreams, I was born into her world. I was her.

There Is More Than You Believe

Posted on 15th February 202619th February 2026 Posted in CitingTagged feelings, heart, love7 Comments

The longest con of all is that after a lifetime of attempting to remain an unshakable force, you will find yourself strolling the streets of Sicily on a Thursday afternoon with two glasses of red wine in your system, and you will be brought to tears by the sight of a beautiful old lady being illuminated by the setting of the sun as she cradles an orange in her hands like it’s some sort of precious relic or maybe the reincarnation of an old friend.

That is when you will find that there is love in most (if not all) things.

There is obviously love in intimate embraces, songs, poetry, and photographs, but there is also love in buying groceries for one.

There is also love in cleaning your room with the windows open and keeping warm with thrifted clothes that first belonged to somebody you will never know.

There is love at the bottom of the bottle of cheap screw top wine that you open before dinner and in the crumbs of olive oil cake scattered across your grandmother’s tablecloth.

Yes, there is love in languid summer nights spent next to a beautiful, brilliant man who kisses you softly and slowly and hangs on to your every word, but there is just as much love in long commutes on public transit.

There is love to be squeezed out of every fruit shared with somebody who makes your life brighter. And there is more love than you’ll believe in a sandwich from the deli down the street.

There is love in difficult conversations. There is love in anger and in hatred and there is love in indifference, too.

There is love in holding somebody to your chest and there is an incomprehensible amount of love in letting them go. Letting go of somebody you love is to say “be free” both to them and to yourself—that is why the best lovers are often leavers, too.

There is love in having tea and oranges with somebody who you know is a temporary fixture and sitting side by side while you listen to the boats go by as they soon will, too. There is love in that.

There is a love that will cut you so deeply that every decision you make as a result of it will give you no choice but to plead lunacy.

There is even love, deluded as it may be, in the soul-shattering corners of heartache and addiction and grief and terror and politics. There is love in places where it never belonged in the first place, and it is up to you to lead it home to safer waters.

There is love all over your face—your face exists because two people once loved each other so much that they couldn’t get close enough. You were conceived by some bout of passion, misguided or not. No matter how far back in your lineage you have to trace it, there is love somewhere.

I can promise you that you will find love wherever you look for it, even if you have to squint to see it.

I can promise you that if you see love in everything, then love will see everything in you, too. That is the very best of what I know to be true, and there is no other song to be sung.

Nina Motter