Mushrooms On A Short Hike In North Carolina

What's a character you were super into when you were like 12?

Oh my god, such a good question. 12 year old my was a fucking VORACIOUS reader, but the first thing that comes to mind is Artemis Fowl. Fam, I thought he was the absolute shit

What Makes a Man

What makes a man

Is being gentle

When we’re irate

It’s being humble

When we are great

It’s finding love

Amongst the hate

What makes a man

Is supporting one another

Building each other up

Picking up the pieces

When everything goes toes up

It’s shaking hands

To heal rifts

It’s being generous

With our gifts

What makes a man

Is helping friends

And making amends

It’s recognizing mistakes

And fixing them with haste

Boys may fight

But men do what’s right

That’s what makes a man

A man in the hospital died today

I'm in the room next door when it happens. No alarms sound his death. No one is there to scream or cry.

Just two nurses, gathered round his bed like doves in blue scrubs. I hope they thought to hold his hand.

His mottled arms are folded neatly across his chest when I arrive. I study his body, instinctively looking for the rise and fall of breath. He is, of course, perfectly still. The sensors have all been removed, he is covered in a feather-light sheet. His skin, nearly translucent, glows in the sunlight.

The older of the two nurses must see my wide eyes; she beckons me and shows me what to do.

This was a good death, she tells me.

I am not convinced. She continues as she hands me a roll of gauze.

He was comfortable.

She shows me how to moisten his eyes to protect them for donation. I touch his eyelid gingerly. The cold makes me flinch. I remind myself that bodies do that when they die.

He was clean.

I place the gauze on his lids, covering his priceless eyes. I remind myself that I cannot hurt him. I still handle him as if his skin were eggshell.

The sterile water runs out from the gauze and streams down his cheek.

He wasn't alone.

First five years spent poor

Beaten, clawed by toxic stress.

A rough start, darling.

We have always been here

the impossible return

This is sick af

Some charcoal drawings

Alphabet of pretty words

Ambivalent, Brine, Crone, Delinquent, Ever, Fervent, Gallant, Hollow, Iridescent, Jagged, Kalimba, Loom, Mosaic, Null, Opal, Petrichor, Quasi, Rescind, Solve, Timber, Undulate, Verdant, Wind, Xylitol, Yearn, Zonal

feels like every few weeks I have to relearn how to exist, that I do need to sit in the sun and move my body and not drink too much coffee and dress in clothes that make me feel good and talk to my friends and journal and get off my phone sometimes and eat vegetables and drink more tea and generally reclaim the space in my life for myself ya know