but i am not a piece of meat or a diamond store or whatever it is. would you blame a dog? interesting question.

so it's me and my friend in the coffee shop and we're both "working" which is to say we're scrolling tumblr, i ask would you love me if i was a worm and we're joking because imagine losing your friend because they sort of kafka out on you. oh my god imagine being a worm though, you'd get to be inside of the soil and just, like, crawlin' around, minding your own business. probably there is no capitalism in the worm life. i want to tell a worm joke here but that would be cilia of me.

so we're chatting about this and i overhear the Table of Guys because if you're in any public place there's like a 30-60% chance of this exact table manifesting (get it? man-ifesting?) unless you're in a certain type of bar, comic book store, brewery, or business meeting; and then the percent spawn chance for the Table of Guys is something like 70 to 95. and i don't need to tell you about who they are or why they're so loud i can overhear them, because you've met them, we both have.

and it's not surprising to you that they're making a joke about something that, like, isn't really funny to me or to you. so when i tune in to one of them saying like what did she fucking expect, both me and my friend send each other that look. and i don't need to tell you what the look is. and then we're quiet for a second, because, like, there's a chance this conversation isn't that one, but it is of course that one, because "locker room talk" actually happens in public, like, all of the time, because they don't actually care if other people are around to feel threatened by them.

everyone at the Table of Guys probably wears shorts during the new england winter and everyone at the Table of Guys has a polo on and everyone at the Table of Guys is probably a "really good guy" and there's this one dude saying like. what are you supposed to do with that. it's putting raw meat in front of a dog and i'm like, okay, these dudes probably failed out of their comp lit class and are probably rude to their waitress but me and my friend are still, just, sitting there, staring at each other. we make another one of those faces and sip our waters judgmentally which is a pretty impressive range of motion out of two pieces of raw meat.

and it's not like it's every day you're reminded of it but i have to walk audrey home because of what happened last spring and there's too many large groups of boys out (it's warm here, finally, and somewhere someone starts howling). i have to park under a streetlamp even though it means more walking in the rain, but, like, bitches stay with our heads on a swivel not today will i be alone in a dark parking lot. we stand outside, talking about the big multi-town drug busts and how addiction is a disease and i mention that they never seem to seize anything like roofies. i'm like there has to be a supplier, right? and we all nod, and then we watch each other's drinks, because last year when this city had what was called a "massive outbreak of drink spiking", the official stance of any officer involved was well, just don't drink anything with alcohol.

because if you're not on guard, it's actually, like, your fault. because you shouldn't have been a diamond store, there are thieves. you shouldn't have been desirable, there are people who are violent when they're desiring. you are a gun. you are a boat. you are a vixen. you are a bird. you are catlike, yawning. you are a force of nature. virgin/whore mother/nympho; whatever, you have overdue bills and want to be a person today, or a worm. that is too bad; you were born in the wrong body, you are actually an unwatched wallet. an unlocked car. expensive jewels in the window. you exist to be coveted. a little shrug from your youth pastor: don't wear anything tight.

this is the same thing as being a dry forest around matches and gender reveal parties. this is the same thing as being an oil slick, a hand grenade, a wet floor. this is the same thing as being an expensive chandelier held up with a big rope - it's asking for it. cartoon character logic; your human body changes shape into the lurid, wolfish, inhumane. your human body, in a dress. your human body, getting groceries. your human body in spaghetti straps. your human body, walking.

actually, when you think about it - it's lucky you've even got this far.

For My Friends, in Reply to a Question

I’m okay. And, of course, I’m not, but I go through the motions. I wake up to the alarm’s howl, even when the word in my body is no. I dress in livid colors. I blacken the hairs of each eyebrow. I bake & braise & pickle. I write & read & lose hours to the blur of the television. I sit for hours in the bath, my skin puckering. I don’t know if I’ll ever go home again. I don’t know who I’ve seen for the last time. The Arabic comes back to me in streaks of paint, verb forms & vocabularies I may never again have occasion to use. My days smudge into one another & it’s not that I am afraid. It’s as if I am watching it all happen below, & I am somewhere above the room, wondering if the rice is burning. I am somewhere above the room, watching my new aches, watching the news as if I am reading it in a novel. I look up the names of people I knew in childhood, learn their new & angular faces, their faraway lives. My grandfather pixelates into a smile & I work my creaking muscles to replicate it. I do not ask if we will ever meet again, I do not ask him to read to me, or for anything that will make me long. I dull it with sugar & oil, with cooking shows, with sleep. I sleep twelve hours each night & in my dreams I am fleeing a war, in my dreams I am touching the faces of my friends, we are each one of us touching, & even in the dream we are afraid.

— Safia Elhillo, from Girls That Never Die

Agape means selfless love, the love for life in all its forms, the love of humankind. There are days that I forget how beautiful people can be; there are days that I forget to give people the benefit of the doubt; there are days that I forget the meaning of empathy, for sometimes in the thick of it all, it can be difficult to keep perspective. Sometimes, while living in the midst of hate, it can be so very difficult to remember how it feels to love, but I want to. I love to see children smile, and maybe I am too soft sometimes, but softness is not weakness, nor was it ever. Kindness too, I think sometimes we forget, is that which makes us human, and we must not lose it, even if the world may not always be kind. It is a courageous thing to love without being loved, to be kind without expecting reciprocity, to have faith, to smile despite knowing pain. This is living and the human condition; in the process of surviving, we need not lose our humanity. In truth, in this life, we need very little. If I should be able to carve out a little piece of happy for myself and my loved ones everyday, I think that I would not have lived in vain.

-V.I.P.P.

Mary Oliver, from “To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”, Devotions

— Philip K. Dick (via quotemadness)

— Karyna McGlynn, “Milk Bath,” from Hothouse

it’s the little things we do for the people we love. it’s the way i always pretend not to notice whenever my boyfriend enters a room so that he can come up behind me and scare me like he always does (“boo” is his way of saying “hello”). it’s the way one of my friends always packs an extra tangerine in her lunchbox, despite her mother’s questioning about whether she really eats both of them, to give to our friend who never brings his own food. it’s the way my best friend doused her new car with air freshener because her boyfriend gets nauseous at the smell of a new car. it’s the way my lover leaves a trail of green paper hearts or pink paper cranes that always end up in my pocket. it’s the way our latin group always prints too many copies of the text before class because we know someone always needs one. it’s the way the ap lang students keep a locker full of red bull in the winter because someone always needs it, and the weather keeps it cold enough. it’s the way my table partner in ap calc always slides the textbook over to me when we use it in class because i never bring mine. it’s the way the upperclassman i share an incubator with occasionally disposes my old petri dishes for me and leaves fresh streak plates if he has the time. these little things show the biggest love, and i’m so grateful to be a giver, a receiver, and a witness of it.

Actually life is beautiful because the sound I make while trying to breathe around hot food sounds like my dog trying to eat an apple. When I yawn my cat tries to put his face in my mouth like a little dentist man and when he yawns I put my finger in his obligate-carnivore trapzone and we both know he will not hurt me. When I do not fold my clothes, they do not hold it against me.

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely, like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

This is the process of getting better. With wonderful people and wonderful strangers and wonderful friends: I am getting better, slowly. Thank you, whoever you are. In some way, you've been wonderful, and left a wonderful place in the world to ripple out to me. In some small way - isn't it beautiful - I promise, you've been helping.

I am such a “huh” ass bitch. Lmao i got bad hearing sorry

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!  Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

I have spent months claiming you left with pieces of me still stuck in your teeth, but tonight — tonight I am whole. Conversations flow between I and people you have never met, and they

love love love me.

Love in a way you never could. Where you presented clenched fists they hand me outstretched palms, and I am free to pass my secrets between my tongue and their left ears. They smile and they

listen listen listen to me

time and time again. And they never interrupt. They've learned the word silence is embroidered on my favorite shirt, and have learned to appreciate my words for what they mean, without mistaking their absence for a lack of heartbeats. In exchange, I Iisten to them as they

give give give me

parts of themselves, and I make my hands steady to hold their puzzle pieces. I know one day I will return them to their table, and maybe, if I've listened enough, I'll be able to help them find where they fit. I know, under their watchful eyes, I will be able to

trust

again.

- The Wonder Years // I Don't Like Who I Was Then