Steff Fleur

it wasn’t even pretty. because when you stop running, everything you’ve been running from catches up. the insecurities. the old narratives. the fear that if you stop trying, you’ll become unlovable.

there’s a strange ache that comes with outgrowing a version of your life that you worked hard to create. it’s the kind of feeling that doesn’t announce itself as grief but hums in the background of your daily routine — in the moments when the things that used to feel important start to feel hollow,

Another definite reason so many people seek the troubled social status of “creative” these days is because it’s easier than ever to become one. The democratization of this pursuit is, on one hand, a beautiful thing.

It’s funny how often the most revealing conversations happen with people who owe you nothing. In friendships and relationships, truth arrives cautiously, parceled out like rations. But a stranger in a velvet-draped room can hand you his whole life in twenty minutes.

Love asks for heat. Left cold, we harden into our existing shape. But under the steady warmth of attention, we soften, loosen, and take on new form. The right gaze reorganises the self; you begin to recognise yourself more clearly in their eyes, and they in yours.

On 15 September 1958 the colonial government inaugurated the Borneo Literature Bureau (Tawai 1997: 6).

The Iban people, also known as Sea Dayaks, are an indigenous Austronesian ethnic group native to northwestern Borneo