Quote by Alejandra Pizarnik: “Words do not fall like rain. They fall like stones.”

Language is not soft or gentle — words can land on a person with hard, lasting force. Something said can bruise, wound, or pin someone in place. This is a reminder that what we say to each other carries real weight, and cannot be unsaid.

Pizarnik published Extraction of the Stone of Madness in 1968, the same year as the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico and student uprisings across Europe. Her own mental health was deteriorating, and her poetry of this period became increasingly concerned with violence, silence, and the body's vulnerability to language.

Argentine poet of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, whose intense, luminous verse explored madness, language, desire, and death. Her work, including the collection Árbol de Diana, published in 1962, made her one of the most celebrated and haunting voices in twentieth-century Spanish-language poetry.