a new year
I think a lot about that Fruits Basket story where the onigiri (rice ball) thinks its plain and bad with nothing special about it
but everyone else actually admires it because of the delicious plum on its back that it can’t see
anyway, I’m going on a second date with a girl soon and couldn’t help but think “Why would she want to keep going out with me?? I’m like, so weird and a little crazy.”
but then I remembered that there is also a plum on my back that I can’t see and that people often like others for reasons we don’t recognize in ourselves. Be kind to yourself. There’s always something good about someone– however little we remember it.
Illustrations for Yasunari Kawabata's The Sound of Waves | Shiosai | 潮騒, by Lâm Tùng Nguyễn.
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.