Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
Listen. Listen to me, okay? Your head is lying to you. You think of the future and no matter what you see it’s a void, there’s nothing, it's grey, and really not different from where you are now but I need you to know it’s a lie. I don’t know why, okay? I don’t know why your head insists on taking the life out of every idea and vision like it’s a conscious effort to destroy you but it. is not. Real. You move and no matter how you move, if you move things change. Even if you have no plans of changing anything, next year will be different. It’s a guarantee. So if you make ANY effort to change it into the direction you WANT it to go
universes will collide.
YOU WILL FIND A WAY!!!! YOU WILL FIND A WAY . You will find a WAY ….. you WILL find a way . You will find a way you will find a way……!! YOU WILL FIND A WAY YOU WILL FIND A WAY you will find a Way you will (find) a way you will find. a way you will find a way YOU WILL FIND A WAY!!!!!!!
Cloudy day, windy
Your boss' makin a loss
But I told you I'd never eaten this kind of ice cream before
And now I'm back for a second helping
First day it was sunny and I was in a good mood
Today I got no such excuse
The word "smile" is overused by corporate and music that's gentrification misspelled
So I'll commit the greatest rebellion of the industry:
You just looked at me.
Desperate claws in a sunny smile I've trained to be a good customer to the service
I ask you if I should take a cup or cone, your opinion
Well, it's my choice
But you can give me a little more in a cup.
I laugh too loud. Answer too loud. You're making money, I'm spending money.
'i hope to see you again, miss.'
That's not part of the script.
They don't say miss here.
I ate stickly sweet dates out of a plastic bag today. With cold fingers, looking out at a morning sky that'd been cloudy for weeks.
Hope has dirt under her fingernails. Her broken foot trembles beneath her as she stands up, reading herself for another punch.
Faith clutches the rim of the sink, breath fogging up the mirror. Then she takes her meds and closes the door behind her.
Perseverance hands bribes to cops and takes the first cleaning job she gets, eyes averted as she gets slapped for tardiness.
Selflessness shivers on her bedroom floor, the memory of loosing a patient on the operation table replaying behind her eyelids again.
Love sits in the visitors hall of the hospital, waiting to replace the wilted flowers beside the coma patient.
Passion only leaves the house to go to therapy, the world too painful to look at for long.
Strength looks at the others and decides to make a home in their hearts.
it is november, and yesterday it felt like it was supposed to be snowing. in boston, november used a winter month, not a fall month. it is supposed to be chilly; rarely capping over 45F. it is a sweater-and-jacket month. it is a "maybe a scarf too" month. in my childhood, november meant blizzards and sleet.
it did not snow. tomorrow the weather predicts a high of 76.
i have spent so many years of my life studying the longterm possibilities of climate change - the culmination of capitalism wreaking havoc on the bodies of people, animals, plants - but every so often i am still shocked by something small and personal.
in a hundred years, when someone goes outside in boston - will they know the feeling of "snow in the air"?
i know it's a learned feeling, a sensation that maybe only longterm experience can teach. a few years ago, i was walking with my friend who had just moved up from the south. i said it smells like snow and she gave me this look like - what the fuck. i said it feels like snow too, which didn't help. she looked up to the bright blue sky and then back at me and then back at the sky. 12 hours later, we had 3 inches. you can just tell if it's going to snow.
except i can't tell, anymore. i stand outside in a tee shirt and watch my dog dance around a lake. we're in a drought and the skin of the water has peeled back twenty meters. the lake is tamed, quiet, puddlelike and sour. my pokemon go app warns there's a weather condition in my area.
my dog gets too hot from running and sits in the water and i want to laugh about his long frame and how awkwardly he sits - and i can't. some simian part of my brain is scratching the walls. it was supposed to snow. it was supposed to snow, but now it's warm instead.
during the last full solar eclipse, the dogs and the birds and the crickets went crazy under utter darkness. we laughed at them then, promising it will all be okay in a moment. but some part of me is still locked in that long night: some animal sensation.
something is wrong, my body says. i can't afford eggs or rent. i go outside to watch a sunset and listen to birdsong. i don't bring a jacket. allergies are killing me this season, allergies i didn't have as a kid. everyone comments that halloween has started to feel strange, offkilter. that it's hard having "holiday cheer." my body thinks it's april, and then it thinks we're in september, and then june.
something is terribly wrong, she whispers. go outside. it is supposed to be snowing.
Robert Frank Nude (Marie) with Cat, 1950
Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole”, On Being with Krista Tippett
it's a new day + the sun rose + you're alive + you're alive + you're alive + your heart is beating + you're breathing + you're alive
(She/her) Hullo! I post poetry. Sometimes. sometimes I just break bottles and suddenly there are letters @antagonistic-sunsetgirl for non-poetry
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