Text: “I need help!! Are you busy?–“
“Very.”
Sorry for being a little late on this one!!
When me and my brother were kids, we LOVED Oreos. I liked the cream parts and he liked the biscuits, so I would just throw my parts to him. Now that I’ve moved out though, I don’t know what to do with the biscuits, so I stack them until I can figure it out.
Nice nails!
Thank you, they’re for Valentine’s Day!
[…]
South Quad, 1:00PM, 2/3/2025
skip the middle man, shall we? there is nothing left to say; i have torn the dictionary apart searching for the words to give you. entrust to me your heart and let me cast it in gold, so it may be preserved for the world to admire. one soul to another, without syllable nor stress, for this is the gift of a language repossessed. temple to temple: we are mothers kneeling and mothers weeping, hands clasped and prayers unanswered. how can we be damned when we have each other? your eyes tell me it does not matter; this altar holds enough room for two.
I think about you a lot. What does that make us?
Alice Lloyd Hall, 4:00PM, 12/8/2024
i can feel the melody of your thoughts through the heat of your touch–an excellent conductor, in more ways than one–your pulse rippling but not breaking the surface, a swordfish streamlined against the ocean. everything we have to say has already been written above, a cosmic braille blotted by the sun. you wear the stars as a cape; i trace the freckles on your back, brush tears away from your cheek. don’t you see? a night sky splashed across your skin. a kiss made salty by sweaty lips, fingertips charting the seas you once commanded. you have been graced with ethereal beauty. in the nowhere there is only the rush, the crash, the silence.
I’ve got no one to cuddle with, [so] I’m gonna buy a body pillow…
Stockwell Hall, 12:00PM, 1/9/2025
a seed of resolve: i am going to love you to the moon and back. you protest weakly, the way a tired child insists on staying awake. do not set your words on me, for i know your tongue too well. i will wrap my arms around you and never let go, until the daylight bleeds into darkness and you fall asleep, the thump in your chest in line with the echo in my eardrum. it will take more than death to separate us. atrophy or infinity, whichever comes first.
Life is a never ending cycle of soiled clothing. Rinse and repeat, dry on medium. I’ve felt this feeling times one hundred these last couple of days and the dirty clothes pile only gets higher and higher.
My visit to the laundromat this past weekend (huzzah to the broken washer) reminded me of the simple pleasures of waiting around. As soon as my roommate and I stepped into the jewel blue toned room lined with walls of washing machines I felt an air of productive stagnancy. There were people mingling about, caring for their jeans or tossing their clothes into the next cycle, and also people perched in various chairs of various types silent but patient. Crosswords and movies and games and naps were all around us as the sounds of tumble cycles created an atmospheric ambience. As soon as I deposited my handful of quarters and heard the water rush into the machine, I felt the room bring me to a lull. Although I had yet a hundred more things to do that day, there was a peace brought over me that I couldn’t quite shake. The very act of doing chores is a necessary nuisance, as we all know, and there’s something about the shared time taken with everyone at the laundromat that makes doing laundry feel a little less lonesome. People coming in with their hampers and baskets all come for different reasons, carrying different things. And yet we all spend the same time waiting around for the machine to release our socks and sheets until we come back to do it all again. There’s a comfort in sharing uneventful time with strangers that feels right in the laundromat.
To take into our next week:
Ins: Pomegranate tea, trout, violins, of Montreal (always), semisweet chocolate chips, goofy looking shoes, texting people about little things, chicken salad with grapes, wrist stretches.
Outs: Forgotten leftovers, not taking responsibility for your actions, forehead pimples, rooms that smell like feet, not turning off the lights behind you, frost in the morning, soggy noodles.
To everyone out there hoarding your quarters for the laundry fund: I understand. I hope for even more quarters to come your way, and for everyone else who is lucky enough to have an accessible (and functional) washing machine I hope you’re able to relish every quarter you receive. If you’re able to, take the time to sit around while you do your laundry. Find a friend. Share a story. Do a crossword. Count every quarter you have and do some math. There’s joy in mundanity and the laundromat is the perfect place for it.
From Your Secret Admirer Probably I like your smile: the way it crinkles your eyes at the end like an elderly person’s despite your youthful face. It makes me dream we’ll grow old together, like your overworn white tee that I wore too: I liked how the shirt smelled of you. Your scent makes me hungry. I can keep my hunger at bay by listening to my favorite piece on repeat: a cacophony of a symphony performed by our starving bodies. The melody of our groans and the rich vibrato of our stomachs harmonize beautifully. Our laughter: the percussive and catchy beat. I think we should become music majors. That way our starvation for one another will forever play in a cannon more famous than D. - Sappy
Witness.
I was young, crooked femme, buzzing with energy, a nova of anger that was pathologized, bad-ified, otherized, punished…
A performer adapting to the endless energy and life force late-stage capitalist performing arts charge as the price of admission to a club that will blacklist without hesitation. I was easy to work with. Disciplined. Energized regardless of fatigue, a vessel down to my fingertips, twisted body best when unnoticed and unclaimed.
I am a rebel in circus garb, prepared for the tower to fall, knowing my role when it happens.
A clown questioning the colonized, controlling, punishing logics of the state, somehow more threatening in a red nose, but not always thought of as such.
Arlecchino, Brighella, Colombina, Pierrot surviving, working, playing my way through a system designed to keep me wanting, needing.
The crooked, hunchbacked witch who served literal communion to an actual demon in the scariest place there was. The gods rewarded me with a red nose and a spine full of titanium so that eyes, breath, spine will forever be grounded and protected in the act of cursing systems that need to crack, crumble, re-puzzle.
But remember, it’s just a show…
I am the deformed artist who was told by a psychic that I mastered dark magick in a past life and by a spiritualist reverend that even the darkest creature goes to the light.
I am the one who spent years seeing THIS quilted together in dreams, and now feeling the living, pounding, vital force in those hazy green, buzzing and burning images come to life.
I dance in darkness, a ghost in the making, a demon falling madly in love with my mangled form, the footsteps in the night, screaming the angry children out of sleep because they are the ones who know that something is not right, and that something is not them.
I am, apparently, The Bad, so why not play games with the worst of the worst, week after week?
And why not argue where I can? When nice accomplishes nothing, I can at least still play the game – wrong if I choose.
As an annoying clown once said to me, and as I once said to someone who talked down to me like I was a noisy 27-year-old child, cheating is a mode of play.
Apparently, there are those who genuinely hate crooked, hunchbacked witch clowns. And they’ll dress up their deep, burning hate like light, saying I’m sick, unfriendly, whatever, because they know they can’t say Bad.
Except now they probably can.
I will play the game with all the Bad ones, overdressing, playing ferociously, cheating if I have to. If they want a demon, I know a few. If they try to cut off my rough edges, I’ll crack their rigid walls and dance on the rubble, and everyone loves to dance. Eventually they’ll join.
Slainte to the Bad ones. When this ending happens and this tower crumbles, we will dance in the flames and build with our disfigured, tired bodies in our own image. The vengeful gods will die. And there will the demons be, in the light, turning to ghost with Mad, irrational love and screaming into the dark in joy and rage as our dance party goes on atop the elements that once made us. Who’s the demon now?
Are you angry yet?
You should be.
The Archway
my great-grandmother had a house
she’s gone
but the house breathes
its strange breaths
strange faces
strange furniture
strange footsteps
imprinted by foreign feet
I remember the house
and it’s frightening to think that someday I won’t
that nobody will
that the memory will die with me
you’re getting so tall
she said before we left
beneath the archway in her living room
neither she nor I will ever stand beneath it
again, I am frightened that the memories
won’t be memories anymore
not that they will be conflagration-charred
cataclysmically-consumed
made holed and holy by a marksman’s arsenal
but that they will dry up and fade
wet footprints on concrete
during the fourth of July
when the weather was warm as the parade marched by
I sat inside a home I might never see
again, I am frightened
that anyone and everything is only mine
for a little while
that life is only for a little while
