Some people meet death with open arms and thank God their time has come. Others beg to be spared for just one more day saying there is much to be done. But if we, before performing an act, would stop and think of death, of judgement and of all such things, I’m sure we would do our best. So that when our time comes, we may say: ‘Take me Lord without delay.’
I always get shit for using italics so much but you will take my excessive italics out of my cold dead hands because as far as I’m concerned each one of these is a completely different sentence:
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – this can be read a lot of different ways depending on context honestly. I mean it’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with it but two people could read it aloud in entirely different ways you know?
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – someone was startled and originally was just going to say ‘what’ but then they recovered and turned it into a complete sentence
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – someone’s really elongating the ‘e’ on that ‘the’ for emphasis, this person’s probably really obnoxious. although tbh they’re probably say it more like, “What. The fuck. Are you doing here?” wow what an asshole
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – this guy’s so pissed, this might be peter capaldi, i don’t know
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – this chick is at an exclusive party and her best friend just showed up without an invitation and at first she was just glad to see her but now she’s concerned
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – oh shit that bitch should have known better than to show her face here after what she pulled, it’s about to go down. actually that might have been her bestie right above this saying that right after someone said this.
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – not only has someone just shown up where they don’t belong but they’re doing something weird, they’re probably a secret teenage hero and all their friends think they’re on drugs
- “What the fuck are you doing here?” – all the bars in all the world and you had to walk into mine, how did you even get here, you don’t even like bars, i didn’t tell anyone about this place i just filled a cave with some beer
i fuckin knew one of yall would tag me in this lmfao anyways bold is Good and Righteous goodnite
how terrifying, to be aging and girl. at 18 i was told by men that i was “the perfect age,” and i still thought it was a compliment. is it because at 20 i figured out how sharp those words were. i felt old at 21, felt like if grey hairs came and my spine cracked i was done for. how scary. i am reminded constantly by “realistic” ideas in fantasy novels that i should have five kids.
my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.
and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young?
maybe i am wrong. maybe it’s just how we all feel, getting old, like time is slipping from us. maybe men do worry that they will be alone forever if they don’t settle by thirty, maybe it’s even because they think they’ll turn ugly. maybe we all squish our lives into that incredibly young decade. what do i know. i’m still learning.
yosb:
i dont always ship rochu but when i do its always pre-japanese occupied (1930s golden age) shanghai bc (1) slutty china (2) white émigré russia
“In no city, West or East, have I ever had such an impression of dense, rank richly clotted life. Old Shanghai is Bergson’s elan vital in the raw, so to speak, and with the lid off. It is Life itself…Yes, it will all be there, just as intensely and tenaciously alive as ever-all there a thousand years hence, five thousand, ten. You have only to stroll through old Shanghai to be certain of it. London and Paris offer no such certainty.”
“This city is a completely female city. Female town. Beijing is male. All rough and politics. Shanghai is more delicate. Money talks. Beautiful. I had enough rough.”
i haven’t been sleeping. i see you updated your profile picture. you look happy in it, carefree with the sun behind you. i scroll past the one where your hair is spread out behind you like a fan. i think about how it looked over my pillow, how waking up to you was, how warm you were. i see you in starbucks. you’re still drinking that same green tea. i say i’m just picking up something for my brother. you say have a nice day and i say haha you too. later i drink until i puke, almost daintily, into the garage trash bin. i see a raccoon. we stare at each other and i say, “i love her” and the raccoon takes off running. i stare at your picture until my eyes glaze. it’s three in the morning and my phone dies. i dream of us sleeping with a raccoon curled up at the end of our bed and your hair spread open like wildflowers and your laugh still hanging in the air.
my perfect crime? I memorize the entirety of the macy’s store inventory. I then go on aliexpress.com and find exact replicas of every single purse in the store. I break in at 3am, and replace every purse with a cheaper version of the purse. I take my real purses home and open up an online store on the darknet featuring fake purses. I then sell these real purses as fake purses, making it so that when the feds catch on to my antics, they spend countless years trying to figure out who can replicate purses this well, and who is selling them. Soon an entire division of the FBI is dedicated to finding me and figuring out how my “fake” purses appear to be real. 45 years later they finally trace my ip address and break into my villa in texas and shoot me right in the leg when i attempt to flee. While this would normally not be a fatal wound, due to my constant devotion to my online fake real purse storefront i have suffered an iron deficiency for 35 years. My blood can’t clot and I start to bleed out. Turns out the woman who shot me was a girl who i made out with once in college, and she holds my dying body in her arms and asks me how my fake purses were so real. I spend the last moments of my fleeting life telling her about how every five years i break into a different Macy’s and replace all the purses, and that the purses I have been selling online for a severely discounted price were actually all real, and I have been doing this purely for the gag of it all. When my former college girlfriend gets home from work after rightfully murdering me for my crimes, she goes into her walk in closet, looks at the 13 gucci purses she owns, and realizes that they’re all fakes.
it is tiring, being endless political just as someone existing. my teacher asks me if i’m writing more of that “feminist poetry.” a lot of it is just talking about me, being a woman, being afraid in the city. i write about walking a line, about how i am expected to choose between home and work, how each comes with a slew of its own insults; how it feels when i am wearing shorts and there are too many men outside. these are just facts of my life. someone in the comments says, “where are woman even coming up with these crazy generalizations in their feminism?”
i hold hands with the prettiest girl i’ve ever seen and someone sighs when they see me. “do they have to make everything gay?” she asks her friend, loudly, “like, do you have to force those views in my face all the time?” i can’t stop blushing. my girlfriend holds my fingers tighter, tighter, tighter, until my knuckles are white, and i let her. somehow, this is us, protesting.
my father’s cuban blood stains my skin, i think. when i am honored with a position in the dean’s private council, a boy sneers, “you only got in because you’re hispanic.” did i? i spend the rest of our meetings wondering if i was selected for my stellar academic record, for the multiple recommendations, for the clubs i lead – or if i was just a move the dean made, to make use of me. when we all take a picture, the dean brings me in the front. in the first three we take, i am not smiling.
it is odd. “i exist.” i say, “i deserve to exist.”
“oh my god,” he groans, “we get it, you’re a feminist.”
oh but i love so easily. i want to be an enigma, or cool and collected, or mysterious and lovely. instead i blurt out information you don’t care about, tell stories that last too long, declare my passions. i gush and trust and wish too hard. i chase people away because i like them too much, i chase people away because i don’t like people very easily. i accidentally mention things like my mental illness and am somehow surprised that people are uncomfortable around me. i’m trying to get better. i’m trying.
moments with you are timeless
yet i wait for the time i can
have those moments
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