Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

Sometimes you have to joke about things like pickling murdered teenagers. It’s a coping mechanism. It takes the darkness out at the knees.

As my friendship with them progressed, I started taking up smoking and doing coke recreationally just for an excuse to get away. I remember standing still in a bar of moving people, the lights flashing red, and thinking, I would definitely rather have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than remain in here. I begged people for cigarettes. I would go to the bathroom with rolled paper money and my driver’s license, not truly desiring any high besides the one I got leaving a room.

Let’s just catalog him in our minds in the place where we track our grievances.”

I feel like I just completed a warped personality quiz and instead of finding out which dog breed matches my soul I am being officially branded mentally ill, traumatized, and neurodivergent.

When we sit there, though, I feel like we are moths drawn to the memory of what an oven can do to sad women.