Ocean Vuong, The Weight Of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, And Visible Desperation

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

September approaching…I feel I owe myself a brief respite of leisure and no rushing around. I can't face the dead reality. I want rainy days, lanterns and a hundred moons twining in dark leaves, music spilling out and echoing yet inside my head.

Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. August 1951

> THE JESTER

But honey, I was born with the world crumbling around my mother's hospital bed

I grew up stepping around the shards with childish innocence

If you didn't want me to take up weapons,

you shouldn't have shattered the world with yours.

I made a list. It's incomplete. Working title:

The pre-apocalyptic "omg moooom" phase:

- ww3 memes

- organising climate crisis protests at 14

- Not knowing the "before". Before the housing crisis. Before 9/11. Before Reagan laws. Before debt.

- no going out. No dates in cute restaurants. Do I look freaking rich.

- Amazon or Nestle owning everything you have ever had

- America just.... I'll just say America.

- Being 5th grade when Trump came into office

- No being able to turn off the ads. The manipulation. Ever. The deep psychology approach to making me despise myself since I learnt to decode information

- constant exposure to violence and suffering numbing us until we're called ignorant and heartless for not reacting

- social media algorithms specifically designed to crush and turn me into an addict. Since before I got my period.

- no more girlhood. You know how to pull an eyeliner and perfectly curl your hair in 7th grade or you die.

- no public spaces. There's Sephora, there are some chain restaurant. And if you feel like feeling a drop of relief you buy a Starbucks.

- Cyber. Bullying. Being on your own. Your parents have no goddamm clue.

Where's My Fucking Teenage Dream but it's real. Where's my fluffy 90s hair, my glitter hair combs, my shopping-as-a-hobby, my milkshakes, my prom? Where's my "my favourite colour is yellow?" Yellow like Butter Flowers, not like toxic waste. Can we talk about growing up in the years before a global system snaps? I was 7 when I read a picture book about Anne Frank. Who knew the early knowledge of how to spell 'death' would be so handy.

Hen and Chicks by Yamaguchi Okatomo, mid- to late 18th century

Masterpieces of Japan on Twitter: Source

head empty just this fresco:

When will the last time I ever mourn us be?

Will it be a random Tuesday when my grief lets me go? Or will I always find a path back to our bed where you let the warmth wither leaving me in the cold all alone?

The last time I think of you might not be some profound longing thought. I might just find myself wondering if that guitar of yours is finally playing some happier chords.

The grief will leave but, that age old adage rings true - grief lives with you, but sometimes it gives you reprieve by simply stepping into the other room.

In that reprieve, the truth hits hard like lightning cracking through a tree, that I’m finally realising I am only mourning the romanticised idea I made us out to be.

I’ll be the bride in all black - t.k.o

Peter Ilsted