Books & Marginalia #1: “I Underlined This Because It Hurt”

[dustandhoney]

 Not everything I underline makes sense to anyone else. Some of it is just... me, on the page, before I even knew I was there.

These are lines I didn’t plan to mark. They just caught me — like a thorn or a sudden cold wind — and I didn’t want to forget the feeling.

Below, a few from this month. No explanations. Just paper echoes.

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📘 “I don’t know what I miss, but I miss it deeply.”
— Mary Oliver, Felicity

I underlined this twice. Once with the pencil I keep in my cardigan pocket, once again when I read it aloud and my throat caught halfway through.

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📙 “Sometimes I think I feel too much. And sometimes I think I feel nothing at all.”
— Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day

There’s a teacup next to this one in the margin. I was trying to draw something that felt safe.

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📗 “There are silences that speak, and silences that bury.”
— Anne Carson (scrap copied from a notebook — I don’t know the source anymore)

I think I wrote “Rae” in the corner and then erased it.

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📕 “You are not made of stone, you are made of earth and blood and breath. You were not built to be untouched.”
— Nikita Gill, Great Goddesses

Underlined in honey-yellow ink. It bled through the page a little. I didn’t mind.

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📔 “I used to think I had to be whole to be loved. Now I think love is what makes the cracks bearable.”
— someone’s blog from years ago, found in an old reblog chain

I saved that one for too long before I let myself write it down.

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📓 “The ache in you is not a failure. It is proof you are still reaching for the light.”
— personal margin note, no book. Just me. Scribbled between chapters.

Sometimes I underline my own thoughts too.

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Maybe that’s the point of all this. Not to remember what I read — but to leave breadcrumbs for who I was, when I read it.

If you’re the sort who underlines, I’d love to know: what’s the last line that made you stop and reread?