The Drowned By Josef Manés , 1867.

Frank Bernard Dicksee, Chivalry. 1885

a little girl who grows up thinking all doors are automatic but actually she’s haunted by a really polite ghost

–Palestinian poet and editor of Mizna, George Abraham.

You think the world would love you better without your holy edges, without your bleeding wounds and unsightly want. You think the world would love you better but it's just the world.

The grass is soft and holds the ants and parasites and wolves. The wind is gentle and topples mountains the same as it steals breathe. The ocean remembers you, the sea consumes. You are not so tall and not so new.

You think the world would love you better but the world has eaten as much as it's given. the world’s great beauty is a mirror and an indifference to all your burning parts. the Sun is graceful. the Sun is deadly.

We inherit tragedy from hunger but the world would love you better no more, no less, than it will bare you. And it will, and it will.

No joke is one-size-fits-all, but adding "but I remain optimistic" at the end of any somewhat-speculating statement makes it funny, taking a different tone in each.

Adding it to the end of something positive gives it an unexpected twist - implying that whatever the good thing that happened was, it wasn't what you expected or hoped to happen, but you're yet to give up hope of whatever the fuck you've now vaguely implied towards might still happen. "He survived and is expected to make a full recovery, but I remain optimistic."

Adding it to a neutral statement implies that you think something can be done about it, funniest if the statement is something that obviously can't be affected. "Apparently it's tuesday tomorrow, but I remain optimistic."

And the bleakest, most hopeless statements just become bleakly funny by the grim absurdity. "About 30 seconds remain until impact, and the chances of any of us surviving the crash are zero. But I remain optimistic."

Roaming Cat Print by MomoSweetPeach

Albert Lynch Joan of Arc in prayer

Oil on canvas, 95 x 47 cm, 19th-20th century

choose your fav flower friend

Victor Nizovtsev, Reflections