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January 18 - January 25, 2025
A future where she would no longer be an insignificant, unknown, unseen thing in an insignificant, unknown, unseen town.
Helen had grown so accustomed to lying to herself that the lies she told others slipped out with ease.
Sometimes his mother’s voice was like the brakes on a train: screeching and hissing, unable to stop. “He’s in the house somewhere, Ma,” Wesley
“Your girl left you, Teddy?” Brandon asked. “Is it because you spent all your money on that Yeezy tracksuit tryna impress her, but instead you look like Freddy Krueger whooped your ass?”
Hunger is a strange animal with many names, and I’ve been hungry a lot in my life. Hungry for things I could touch and things I couldn’t, for things I could name and words my tongue had been robbed of.
It turned out I was angry because I was playing a game whose rules had never been designed for me to win.
When speakers talk about white men targeting Indigenous communities, people glance in his direction. It’s not like he’s the only white guy at the Pow Wow, but he’s the only one who looks like he’d be just as at home at the Republican National Convention as he seems to be here.
Human beings become monsters when they taste their own people’s flesh. It’s a fitting punishment. They’ve abandoned their kind, so they no longer get to be their kind. But I haven’t abandoned anyone. I didn’t choose this. I wouldn’t be punished for surviving, would I? Would I?
On Saturday morning, before everything went wrong, the grand gong of the doorbell groaned differently. It was a bloated sob that ricocheted off the walls of Troy’s home until it petered into a distant scream before vanishing altogether. Troy would later think of that twisted sound as an omen—a sign that whoever stood uninvited at the threshold of his family’s normal, happy life should not be acknowledged, even if it meant never opening their front door again.
They all had the time to kill. Empty evenings structured around a lack of responsibilities, activities taken on if they enjoyed them and tossed aside when they got bored. It didn’t matter how badly they screwed up. Life would continue, the years would go on, and when they each inherited their houses or whatever the fuck else so-called all-American families passed on, the portraits on the wall would still be smiling with white teeth and white faces.
As long as the racist in question was older than them, their racism could be excused, if not forgiven entirely.
They say that when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. But they don’t tell you that when the person you love dies, their life replays in your head, and you’re left asking yourself why and how—endless questions you can never answer.
What bothers me is how caged I feel. But human bodies aren’t made to be expansive. Human bodies are made to be simple and symmetrical, not monstrous.
She is so damned tired of this.
Her blood pumps faster, coursing through her veins like a rushing river.
And anyway, demons don’t exist. Satan isn’t some fallen angel who helms a winged army. He’s a myth. Not. Real. Humans are the real demons.
Possessing a body is like diving into ice-cold water. Shocking and unsettling, then invigorating. Blood pounds around me with each of Joseph’s strong heartbeats. There’s a swoosh of breath as he hitches it in terror. Muscles twitch and bones grind in resistance. When his tension releases, I can feel limbs—arms and legs. Fingers tingle. I realize now how much I took my own physical body for granted. I’ve missed being a full living human.
Disbelief sharpened the edges of your voice like the blade of a guillotine.
