Tag: asoss

She used the word assure when she meant ensure. which is not a typo, it’s a language problem, which is a big deal! People type fast, whatever, it’s okay, but somebody wants to be a writer and they don’t understand the difference between assure and ensure?

Traverwood Library, 5:30PM, 1/14/2025

there are windows of opportunity and there are doors of regret, sometimes both, but never neither. you have blown into my life like a wayward leaf. where did you come from? darling, i was born in a hurricane. the windows are boarded but the door still swings off its hinges. you shake your head–whether in denial, or disbelief, or innocence, as if it would make a difference. Isabel Allende was right: two words is all it takes to change a person’s life. everyone could see the eyes of the puma soften as she steps towards him and takes his hand~

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Back when I was in Livonia… the school district said kids can bring their phones to school and I remember being like “we’ve lost the war!”

Jerusalem Garden, 12:30PM, 2/1/2025

who gets to control the narrative? the caution tape flutters, a moth snared in a spiderweb. i am an ambulance chaser in every sense of the word. you tell me it is immoral, and i remind you that morality is a price to pay for your wellbeing. are we only in love because we love emergencies? sometimes we make bad decisions and they blossom into the undeserved fruits of our labor. other times they burrow into the belly, out of sight and out of mind. you are delicate in this life, just as i am delicate without you–mother nature plays such cruel tricks on her children! my stomach rumbles in agreement: there are no dormant volcanoes, only overdue ones.

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…I didn’t even get my freaking cheese grits this morning!

Duderstadt Connector, 5:00PM, 2/4/2025

annoyance is worse than tragedy because it fools you into believing that your emotions are unjustified. we allow grief to permeate the barrier, unregulated, like a broken floodgate. this luxury does not extend to inconvenience without the eye of guilt, an ever-present watchman. the caterpillar and the butterfly, two sides of the same coin–what is a tragedy but an annoyance left unchecked? it is human nature to rot from the inside. even the phoenix dies from an ironclad heart: thinking of you turned me into ashes.

That’s like people who put their socks over their pants. Ugh.

That’s horrendous!

Intramural Building, 3:30PM, 1/13/2025

the voice you are reading this with is not mine or yours, but a narrator present to your thoughts. first-person omniscience? an enzyme, breaking and rebuilding, a tornado of yarn tangling the threads separating memory from fiction. they are both the same, in a way; there is no way to prove the past, just as there is no way to prove your presence. your finger slips against the needle and you curse softly, a soap bubble of a word, floating out of your mouth and into the air.

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Apparently her nickname at church was church slut. Yeah. I guess we’re just leaving it out there.

Palmer Commons, 5:00PM, 12/2/2024

ecstasy is paired with dread like a fine wine to a steak: one enhances the flavor of the other. you are frying shallots and mincing the skins, turning them into an autumn leafpile on the cutting board. i don’t ask what you plan to do with it–with what? the skins, the oil, the knife? a square of butter falls into the pan and begins to bubble in protest, a witch burned at the stake for predicting the future. a final chemical farewell–just like the scent of grass, a scream without sound–as you turn around and pour the scraps down the sink. my stomach drops with the oil, with a hiss. paired with dread, indeed.

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What the [-] is wrong with you? You’re showing all of Ann Arbor my ass! Pull my draws up!

Blake Transit Center, 4:30PM, 1/27/2025

another theory: for each idea we nurture, ten more sink their roots in the soft flesh of the brain. antheia’s snakes, long and green and suffocating everything in sight. that’s not right. you’re confusing jack and the beanstalk with king midas. and wasn’t it medusa with the snakes? i wave you off. the vines tighten further. delirium is a delicious taste because it convinces you that nothing is impossible. everything, and everything still–don’t you see? the beginning is the end of the beginning. the stardust twinkles in your eyes, just to prove a point.

I’ve decided that if I’m not going to succeed socially, I’m going to succeed professionally. I gotta make use of something… if I can’t be in a sorority, imma be in a business frat.

Alice Lloyd Hall, 9:30PM, 1/21/2025

relegate your goals to the backseat. how low is the bar, anyway? along the margins, the minimum viable product that you need to sustain yourself. don’t you know? you are living in a dream and all dreams must end. i sit and watch the advertisements fly by on the wall of the station, a square meter of air compressed into a single breath. an inhalation of eternities, a sunbeam of love: i am speechless at your gallantry. you press your mouth to mine and say that you have found the words for both of us.

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His technical skills were crazy because he would put in twenty hours a day when he couldn’t sleep!

DOW Building, 11:30AM, 1/16/2025

the steps to greatness and the steps to madness are often interchangeable. like a genetic sequence, one misplaced brick can rebuild generations and shatter entire worlds. on this climb, a fall from at the beginning and a fall at the end are of equal heartbreak. it is a fall in the middle, when you have gotten comfortable with the ascent and are just beginning to hope, that hurts the most. take fortune away from a poor man, he will think nothing of it. take fortune away from a rich man, he will think he deserves it. but take fortune away from the man who treads water and watch him sink like a stone.

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That’s all you need: nice pizza and windows and a bed.

Markley Hall, 10:00AM, 1/17/2025

there are two ways to approach life: directly, or not at all. change your perspective, accelerate your reference state–as if your room were a prison and not a shelter! a deluge of thoughts, liquid gold, envelops your brain in a cast. the migraine spills over, sharper than lightning, splitting teeth and tongue. your nails leave indents in my wrists like a paragraph. essays have been burned and blood has been spilled over less.

…and she responds, and doesn’t get weird, or defensive, like you.

[mouth agape]

Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. Me too.

Trader Joe’s, 12:00PM, 11/24/2024

every shipman is aware of the dangers of slack, a knife of potential cutting across the air. and yet we have tiptoed around the topic for too long, each of us too scared to wake the current and lose the line. like a cruel childhood game–whoever moves first loses!–your hands are at your mouth and i am on one knee (as if to tie a shoe, i tell you, but really, do you believe that?) and the moment is frozen in a dream, so vivid a memory could not do it justice. the orange is left to spoil on the counter, unpeeled, unsplit. pure and perforated and rotten, at the same time, in all the wrong places.

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If you don’t like it, you just hand it to Eileen, be like “cool, now you have two!”

Food Mart, 12:00PM, 12/26/2024

the vice of the human condition is the systematic approach to an unstructured life. you have been tasked with falling in love: go and sit on the bus and hold eye contact and brush the snow out of her hair. a look of surprise overwhelms you. even the most artistic are drawn to scientific conclusions, eliminating every variable at once. everything must go to plan or else it is not the plan at all. a senior thesis: is it, or is it not? the numbers quiver in their sockets.

when you board, the bus is empty, the driver wears sunglasses, and all the snow has melted.

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That’s my job, and yeah, you and I have to stick to it because we’ve been way too accommodating!

Traverwood Library, 5:00PM, 1/14/2025

the tap water runs clear and straight–an ominous sign. it was the vietnamese activist Duong Thu Huong who wrote there’s no river without a bend just as there’s no life without its unhappiness. i look around; the room is littered with peanut shells. i am an elephant with a blanket on its back and the room is nothing more than a cage. outside, panem et circenses. the carnival band starts to play and the world is filled with all the notes of an obituary.

I never know the next time I’ll see you.

I’m always at home.

By the time I come home it’s 2AM!

Well, I’m probably awake…

Weiser Hall, 3:30PM, 10/19/2024

for Edgar Allan Poe, remoteness is a necessary ingredient of literature. we must detach ourselves from reality in order to best portray it. Muñoz Molina writes that he lives through the death of a beautiful cigar girl. He writes a story in which Mary Rogers becomes Marie Rogêt, substituting Paris for Jersey City and the Seine for the Hudson. like an outsider swiveling a telescope, sweeping the curtain aside, peering into the void of human nature from the neighbor’s window. her murder, of course, is never solved.

the cold is a sedative, the snow a sterilizer. you are across the world and only now do i dare to loosen my tongue. i brush your name onto the paper as i once did to the tears across your cheek.

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Registering for classes now is wild. Go inside, they have more wifi inside than outside.

More wifi?

Pierpont Commons Outbound, 11:30AM, 12/6/2024

hey, it’s me. yeah, it’s been a long time, huh? i just got your letter, the mailman told me it was a miracle the machine could read it. he said you have the worst handwriting he’s ever seen, haha. there are just piles and piles of stuff in the back of the room that they just can’t send. can you imagine that? terabytes of information is just lost in transit, as if it had never existed in the first place. isn’t that crazy?

hello? is anyone there?

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[holding a plate of cucumbers, hummus, and peppers] I like to get creative with my meals.

Yeah, I guess you could call that a meal…

East Quad Dining Hall, 5:00PM, 1/7/2025

the act of eating with someone is perhaps the quickest way to rewire the neurons. do you think our brains misattribute this relief of hunger? your fork vibrates, ever so slightly, attuned to the heartbeat pulsing through your fingertips. there are things we are not in control of and this is one of them. once bitten and twice shy, why do you keep your distance? the stomach rattles its chains.

Oh yeah, how was your birthday?

It was nice.

How old are you turning, 17? Hmm, something’s not adding up!

EECS Building. 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

it has been one year but not quite one birthday. the ball drops. you used to think it would shatter, that the people in the square would be pelted with shards of glass, the previous year burrowing into skin as a final act of rebellion. now i think it is not too far from reality, that the more we celebrate, the more of the self we sacrifice. i tear off the last page of the calendar and notice a message carved into the cardboard backing. you made it! perhaps not everything requires a celebration, but today is an exception.

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[pointing to price tags] five, five forty, five forty-five… nothing is cheap!

NCRC Building 20, 4:00PM, 11/19/2024

red circles around black squares, a day to be dreaded either forwards or backwards: either living in fear of it, or looking back and mourning the wisdom gained with hindsight. a markdown on the quality of life, some would say. humans are creatures of structure. we are not beavers, we do not need to live our lives regulating the currents of space, stemming the flow of time. and yet we construct our own complacency. we convince ourselves that our habits pass for our happiness. the red circles have been relegated to excess inventory, to clearance–cash in on the memory today or risk losing it forever. the price to pay? you must tell your story.

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They have price tags under their tags that are cheaper…

They’ve gotta pay rent.

We’re not helping!

Rally House, 8:30AM, 11/29/2024

telling a true story is impossible. it is deceptive, the folds of detail stored and scrambled, this perverse act of remembering. in reality, remembering is the easy part; stripping the petal from the stamen, sterilizing the thought so it does not reproduce, is much harder. any emotion associated with an action is boiled away, a chrysanthemum tea prepared for the hanged man–a scribe, tasked with an unbiased account of the emperor, a death sentence in this life and the next. tomorrow I will waste another hour regretting yesterday, whispers the man. a wisdom, distilled in blood, paid for in sanity.