SMART

So I started seeing this woman recently Or going on dates with this woman Or however we talk about dating in our 30’s…

I went on dates recently. With this woman. She is…smart. And I don’t mean street-smart Talk your way out of anything savvy Intuit danger in shifts of body weight observant Figure out a temporary fix for the thing you can’t afford a repairman for handy Or even Especially Know the geometry of fitting everything you own in two bags so well you can do it with someone screaming at you to get out

Street savvy, dark corner, make it work Survival guide smart. I don’t mean that. That I know.

I mean, at first, book smart School smart Language smart Education smart And I’ve never thought of myself as stupid But when someone asked if she’d met me at her work I laughed And had the urge to say “Oh no, she’s brilliant. I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.” I’d never felt that way before. It was honestly kind of delightful.

But that’s not really what this poem is about Because that’s only at first. It’s how I’m avoiding the thing. The actual thing this poem is about Because booksmart is not what struck me about her

It’s the whip-crack smart It’s the “You don’t even like the phrasing of your own question” When she directs it back toward me smart It’s the flash of sarcastic humor And the elegant two-step of avoidance It’s the way she croquets answers Knocking my questions down the field Off course Smart.

I’m not sure where she learned All that emotional street-savvy All that almost undetectable managing you use when you know how to talk someone down Even when they are screaming at you. I am afraid it was in places as unfriendly In their own way As the ones I grew up in It makes me want to call her And ask if it would be okay if I drove a half hour To spend fifteen minutes kissing her before driving the half hour home

She’s smart. Emotionally savvy in a way that makes me want to give her all my Best Biggest Brightest Feelings I am made mostly of feelings. I want to pour the softest ones into her hands Those witch hands that plant gardens in their wake and keep everyone at bay I know mine are small but I do have this big thumping heart To make up for it

Muffin & Cheese

The real “horror” of Hill House is not ghosts. It’s grief and trauma and broken relationships. It’s being alone and losing someone and living without them. The real horror is human. 

The real horror isn’t an afterlife full of ghosts, but the opposite: an afterlife full of nothingness. 

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told - The story of a man afraid of flying, and an angel afraid of falling, who somehow met in the middle. The man who denied the existence of angels came to love one. The angel who never felt began to feel. The man who was saved from an eternity in Hell by an angel. The angel who fell in every way imaginable for a man. The man, with a clear path to escape, decided instead to stay in Purgatory for a year, searching for his angel, praying to him every night. Begging. When he found him, he held him; he told him that he needed him, that he’d get him out, even if it killed them both. The angel rejected his faith, his family, his home, and everything he knew, so he could keep the man safe. They stay together despite fate, despite what they are, because they refuse to be pulled apart.

Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them.

“Camille, if you could be any fairy-tale person in the world, who would you be?” Amma asked. “Sleeping Beauty.” To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely. “I’d be Persephone.” “I don’t know who that is,” I said. “She’s the Queen of the Dead,” Amma beamed. “She was so beautiful, Hades stole her and took her to the underworld to be his wife. But her mother was so fierce, she forced Hades to give Persephone back. But only for six months each year. So she spends half her life with the dead, and half with the living.”

If your arm was long enough to touch the sun, you wouldn’t feel the pain for 6792 years. Maybe that’s why

I didn’t notice we were burning up until my body was on fire, maybe We only know love with our arms outstretched, praising each other into godfire, our hearts

Like ashtrays for when the other turned to soot, holding onto a memory we never shared. 

mom was describing a tattoo a girl once took her to a back bedroom to show her, which was a fishing pole low on her pelvis with a line and hook that descended into her bush where a small clownfish hid amongst the hair. and that’s just. that’s a goal. and the ultimate freedom from obligation, like “gah I would shave but it would ruin my very good joke, what are you gonna do, I gotta make sure there’s foliage for my little clownfish to hide in”

then mom finished telling me this and looked off for a moment. “my god,” she said. “she was flirting with me. fuck. goddamn it.” 

i THINK im gonna start black mirror

he’s doing WHAT with a WHAT

writing conclusions in papers is like the stupidest thing ever though like what’s the point of dedicating an entire paragraph to “so yeah i know you just read my paper but this is a summarization of what you read in case you need to be reminded about what you just read” like why can’t the paper just end 

I keep seeing this post and similar ones, and if y'all’s teachers and professors have left you with the idea that a conclusion is a summary, they have failed you in a big way.

Your conclusion is your “so what’s the fucking point” section. You’ve given you’re reader a lot of info and now they need to know why they care. Depending on the type of paper you should be giving a plan of action, explaining how this knowledge changes our understanding of the topic, link your paper to other disciplines, suggest further areas of study, etc.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received is that if you can’t envision yourself dropping the mic and strutting off stage at the end of your conclusion then it’s probably not strong enough.