I AM NOT INTERESTED IN LIVING A LIFE WHERE I COWER AWAY FROM BEAUTY OR GOODNESS BECAUSE OF THE POTENTIAL

I imagine a different life and know it could not exist, know it is incomparable, and consider it anyway.

There is a life in which I finish the chemistry lesson without interruption. I celebrate Christmas, my 12th birthday, and I see my dad again. In another life I meet him as an adult with knowledge and perspective. Maybe we talk, maybe we don’t. He would be alive. Anger fades at the sound of a beating heart. It is enough. I tell him I missed him, he asks what for. He says he’s sorry, and I am too. We laugh or argue and in both I hear his voice, so old and new. I would know him. He knows me. Both chairs are warm, and mirrored eyes are no longer alone. He’s there and it’s real, and he’s not as tall as I remembered.

Empathy stands on a mountain of grief; childhood by the lake. He reanimates. His hair, his eyes, an unharmed body. The words are mine. And he is not him. He exists as I tell him, his life in my hands, and as memory fails his image shifts. I will never remember as much as I wish I could.

In this life I wake up and he is still dead. His eyes are unblinking, his ashes are cold. His voice is faint. I shake her brain to remember again and she is a child and she is scared. I hold her and I am me. Seven years are infinite and small. My dad scatters, fragmented and whole. And where he does not, grief remains.

In a life where anything can be heard, I tell him I love him, and he knows.

just realised i never posted this one here! shes one of my faves <3 and she is a print!

ugh why must I be always so repulsed by my own vulnerability but I find it very moving and impressive if other people are vulnerable with me????

aug 17 2022

We live in an age of regrettably half-assed insults. I would have done great at like 1654 where you could walk up to someone you don't like and just say shit like "how cruel can nature be, that now age denies you wisdom, as youth once forbade you beauty" and get stabbed.

Aleksandra Waliszewska

what are you waiting for? someone to grant you permission? the perfect and permanent emotion? a shooting star to magic away every problem you have or ever have had? alright, wait away then. but no one is going to live your life for you while you wait to become someone else

Maple and Spruce    -    Linden Frederick , 2022,

American , b.1953 -

oil on linen, 16 x 16 in

Fallen Angels (1995) dir. Wong Kar-wai

file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever

what will it be, boss? the comfort of misery or the pain of change?