i don't want to talk about the violence i don't want to talk about the shape of the bruise i don't want to talk about how it sounded or what it felt like or how afterward, for hours, i had three sharp words banging around in my head in a cartwheeling spike - i just want to say it was something that hurt and to hear back i'm sorry it hurt you, do you need help feeling better? i just want to lie down without being asked to lie open and show where the hurt came from and to give birth again to the shadow memory, watch it ooze again across the floor to dance in the wake of my feet.
i do not want to argue with strangers on the internet who have no stake in the matter, telling me that kind of violence is often overstated. i do not want to argue. i do not want to keep getting older with this painted under my chubby bicep and splashed down my side. i do not want to hear i am playing the victim when i am the victim. i do not want to be a survivor, i just want a life in a green patch without having to endlessly sublimate the glass i have chewed, over and over, pouring sand out of my mouth into the wrong hands - i just want to be happy on sunday.
i do not want to talk about the violence and why the bell of my body is always hollow! i know it is hollow. please stop asking about it. i have spent so many hours trying to explain how it fell apart. i need to rest now. i need to take my meds now. i need to wake up and be someone who can have the quiet back without flinching in response. i know you don't believe it happened that way, why would you? you are someone looking for the clever ending; where you somehow win my narrative by showing me i am not allowed to be hurt by what happened. and i am just a person. i have already lost everything.
Do you ever come around here anymore?
very rarely
daren thomas magee
Yeah I'm gonna get my feelings hurt! I know that! But I also know that I have spent years so numb that my world was a smooth grey ache that never subsided. So yeah. I'd rather play hungry and fast and get hurt running than be stuck there. Just watching.
But there is something that happens when you are told you are Too Much You begin to ask everyone, how small would you like me?
— Mary Lambert, from “You Are with the Wrong Person,” Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
imagine if language failed us
and we spoke in gestures
instead of nouns?
without witness, my body becomes a field of crabapples, split-red sour-sweet rotten.
— Gwen Benaway, from day/break
Keep fighting
I’ve been wanting to share this comic ever since I noticed that after the first two weeks of protesting most of social media started “going back to normal” as if there aren’t still people walking out and protesting making sure this movement doesn’t go silent or looked over. I appreciate every single individual that is out in those protests helping and being vocal for this change. Also those continuing to spread word and help out through petitions and donations. I wish y’all to stay safe and well.
Avatar: The Last Airbender by Flesh.png