Hey Man I Found A Piece Of Your Soul Stuck In The Text Messages Of Old Friends You Don’t Speak To Anymore.

sonnet for the uncanonical, 2025

written for two-bees escapril; the prompts are 'sonnet' (week one) and 'apocrypha' (day three). i will admit that this is probably only partially a sonnet; i've never been great with meter, but the rhyme scheme and structure is mostly there! i think. either way, i had fun challenging myself.

When Everything Everywhere All at Once said “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind, especially when we don’t know what’s going on" 

When the Good Place said “Why choose to be good every day when there is no guaranteed reward now or in the afterlife… I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.” 

When Jean-Paul Sartre said ”‘Hell is other people’ is only one side of the coin. The other side, which no one seems to mention, is also ‘Heaven is each other’. Hell is separateness, uncommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven on the other hand is very simple, and very hard: caring about your fellow beings.“

A special shoutout to LGBTQ+ Mormons and exmos this pride; to you in the closet, sitting awkwardly in sacrament meeting, finding excuses to duck out of homophobic Sunday school lessons, you, wearing a rainbow pin to girl's camp, you out and proud and still attending, enduring side eye from sisters and comments to "maybe tone it down" from your bishop. You, afraid to bring your partner home, you who's only Mormon on Sundays but can't bear to let your parents down (earthly and heavenly). To you who took the bravest step and left the church and your community, and feel like you'll never find a new one. To you who hears "no way you were a mormon!" but are still unravelling the trauma of purity culture.

I see you.

I love you.

It gets better.

Well that is my belief, so thank you for creating something so touching ❤️

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." - Emily Dickinon - Not my belief honestly but it worked for the picture lol.

Dreams to have while walking home from the library

I read of mangroves, coastal forest far away protection against monsoons, a gnarled seawall –  nature standing up against its watery cousin who would sometimes threaten death when cousin cried and overflowed with tears.

But mangroves are far away, small black and white image printed on trees so far from arboreal, trunks whittled down and forced into a single, bleached dimension to serve such a purpose now as to show a photo of a mangrove.

Just as flat and white, but the moon seemed closer that night. Closer than mangroves and monsoons. Back down to this autumn scene, now the maples stand burning all crimson Maroon leaves.

Monsoon trees. There is life here and now, then there is life in pictures and words. Our minds catch both in one fell swoop and they dance together in their captive company, lightly stepping but sometimes intersecting in their closeness – the impossible twirling of stony boughs become a nest for the granite moon, immobile limbs graced with the agility of dreams. Fancy flying one thought to the other, closing the distance and realizing two worlds mingling in an elegant, chaotic embrace. Mangroves holding the harvest moon, from both the truth and I so far, but so beautiful.

nvmillustration

By Laura Gilpin

Alessandro Biffignandi

@judas-redeemed / Wilhelm Schulz, “All Soul’s Day” / Neil Hilborn, “Our Numbered Days” /@petfurniture / Hugo Simberg , “The Garden of Death” / Ramona Ausubel