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What I mean is, it never once occurred to me that you, too, were mortal.
It takes me longer than it should to remember that tops and bottoms are names for articles of clothing, too.
Pop Quiz: Q: How is a Shadester made? A: Two parts fearmongering, one part delusion, three parts manipulation. Season heavily with deceit labeled as promise. Stir consistently on low heat, so low hardly anyone notices it’s on.
The news has insisted that we aren’t experiencing a perpetual heat wave, that we are imagining things.
I never feel like I know how to live in the world. Only on top of it, hanging on as it spins madly.
“You know, I’ve been thinking. You could have been the one to have the baby and everything would have been alright. I’m not one for blame, but . . .” and she doesn’t finish her sentence.
Ohhh myyy
We held each other’s hands tightly. The same hands we sometimes dropped in public when we felt unsafe—we had that privilege unlike so many others; whiteness meant we could remove our otherness like a sweater if we wanted. We could walk five feet apart and temporarily become gal pals.
Pop Quiz: Choose the word that doesn’t belong: A. Safety B. Attachment C. Comfort D. Mother
“Everyone always thinks the past was simpler days.”
I searched “girls kissing,” something I’d justified early on as nothing more than a funny joke—ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if I looked up girls kissing? Ha ha what a funny thing. Anyway, boys are cute.
Real
If I were the type to believe in messages from the universe, I would be upset. But I’m not, so. You looked inconsolable.
My father laughs a full body laugh, his shoulders shaking like he’s riding a rickety roller coaster. And just like that, he becomes my dad again.
Ouch
Pop Quiz: True or False 1. You need more than any one person can reasonably give.
We are putting on an incredible performance of survival. Where is our prize?
Two NoShad men brutally raped and murdered a Shadester woman. That is how the news anchor words it—brutally. As if there were any other way to rape and murder someone.
All charges are dropped against the men who raped and murdered the Shadester woman. For fear of stating the obvious, I will not describe the men for you, Beau.
My parents must have sensed my queerness, possibly as young as three, but instead of sitting me down and saying, We love you, we love you. Here’s what you need to know about the people who won’t,
One study found that having a second shadow is akin to experiencing severe trauma. I wonder if they could tell me more about how leaves grow on trees.
Pop Quiz: Q: Who controls your body? Q: How much do you trust them?
Objective: Be the first player to teach her about cruelty, how it rides on the back of cowardice and calls itself bravery. No one tells you this, but the game is rigged from the start. Number of players: There are always more than we think. Audience: Anyone who wants to truly comprehend why a stranger could hate them without ever having met them.
The get-out-of-jail-free cards may as well be a pair of handcuffs.
In this world, you learn to hold the good days and bad days together in your lungs, and you don’t dare breathe out, for fear that in releasing the bad days, you’ll also lose the good ones. On the walk home, I think, this has been a good day.
Had Siegfried known the price of our friendship, I’m afraid he would have grabbed his paint brush and climbed inside our lives all the same. What do you do with a love like that?
Had she been paying attention, she would have known it hadn’t happened overnight, that it took a million tiny stabs to bleed democracy dry.
Pop Quiz: Fill in the blanks: Many people in the United States find it ____ to ____ about _____ until it _____ to them.
one of reserved contempt, one that could be mistaken for annoyance if you weren’t paying attention. I’m afraid of that look; I have nightmares about that look.
“In case you were wondering, I told her you had enough dignity to fill the whole universe,” she says. “And I crossed my fingers it was a good thing.”
the kid reminds me that she is just a kid, that no matter her wisdom and intuition, she still needs space to let every wild inspiration enter and move through her without trepidation.
“Can you play something a bit more hopeful?” I call from the other room. “Why are you always up in my business?” the kid shouts back, switching to the song she’d written about the flaws of the education system.
Slay
Pop Quiz: Q: What is a synonym for role model? A: The kid, at school, disrupting power.
Like catharsis in reverse, I feel like I am finally gathering all the emotions I’ve dropped since your death. And it feels nice.
If I were a social worker assigned to my case, I would say, “Kris, if you’re feeling compelled to destroy something, that means it is good. It is really good.”
“And he was so smart, like the smartest person I’ve ever met.” “Hey,” I say. “Hey,” she says, waving as if she’s greeting me.
Q: Which is more important: the object or the light that illuminates the object? A: I know that I’ve spent my entire life convinced I wasn’t real unless I was loving someone with everything I had.
I worry I will lose it all at any moment, but I keep my exoskeletons to myself.
shared her crayons with some doofus named Bait, only she doesn’t call her a doofus; I do, in my head, like an adult.
“First of all, if I’m being honest, Mom, I know I’m acting all tough, but it’s just my tough mask.”
What I’m trying to say is—I’ve never been afraid of anything more than I’ve been afraid of my own happiness. But I want it, oh I want it. Something tells me it isn’t happiness without fear. This small fact keeps me breathing and sleeping.
She is what one might call well-adjusted—I wonder what that is like.
What does it mean when you say I love you because you so desperately want to hear it back?
“You deserve better,” I say, and then, unlike all the times I failed partners in the past, when I was too young to understand just how malleable I was, I become better.
The kid is trying to show me who I am, one imitation at a time, if only I’d listen.
Here’s the thing: when an insect grows too big for its exoskeleton, it sheds it, a process known as molting. This may sound benign, but insects cannot breathe while molting. They must stop eating and lie very still. Completely incapacitated, they are vulnerable to a predator attack.
“Why are they always running away from us?” “They aren’t, kid. They’re running toward something.”
Bear.
<3
“Hopefully, I kicked him hard enough so he can’t ever be an ingredient man,”
But there is one person cheering her on. At the very front, her husband holds up a sign: Will you marry me again?
“I want you to know that if I had the chance to do it all over again, I’d choose you twice,” I say, hoping the door connecting us will stay open forever, hoping that if given the chance, she will make the decision to stay. “Fuck that, I’d choose you three, four, twenty, one hundred times over.”
