It’s Sad That Something As Beautiful As Plastic Surgery Is Being Commercialized And Commodified Like

Kids Who Die

by Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die, Black and white, For kids will die certainly. The old and rich will live on awhile, As always, Eating blood and gold, Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi Organizing sharecroppers Kids will die in the streets of Chicago Organizing workers Kids will die in the orange groves of California Telling others to get together Whites and Filipinos, Negroes and Mexicans, All kinds of kids will die Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned Who pen editorials in the papers, And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names White and black, Who make surveys and write books Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die, And the sleazy courts, And the bribe-reaching police, And the blood-loving generals, And the money-loving preachers Will all raise their hands against the kids who die, Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets To frighten the people — For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people — And the old and rich don’t want the people To taste the iron of the kids who die, Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power, To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die — Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you Except in our hearts Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field, Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht But the day will come — You are sure yourselves that it is coming — When the marching feet of the masses Will raise for you a living monument of love, And joy, and laughter, And black hands and white hands clasped as one, And a song that reaches the sky — The song of the life triumphant Through the kids who die.

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

Kate Baer, from And Yet: Poems; “Idea”

[Text ID: “I will enjoy this life. I will open it like a peach in season, suck the juice from every finger, run my tongue over my chin. I will not worry about clichés or uninvited guests peering in my windows. I will love and be loved. Save and be saved a thousand times. I will let the want into my body, bless the heat under my skin. My life, I will not waste it. I will enjoy this life.”]

today i’m fifteen

bruises on my hands

scabs split open

body shot to hell

today i’m angry at the world

and i don’t understand why

the world doesn’t take offense

today i’m burning rubber

in old parts of town i swore never to return

today i can’t seem to get lost

these winding roads are too familiar

and every turn brings me back to fifteen

bruises on my legs

fresh scabs from last night

eyes shot to hell

funny how yesterday i was twenty

adolescence fleeing my skin

tattoos scabbing over

innocence shot to hell

yesterday i locked eyes with you

yesterday i burnt rubber in the parking deck

yesterday i couldn’t get lost fast enough

today i’m fifteen

bruises still fresh

scabs yet to form

five years shot to hell

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “do not stand at my grave and weep” after the poem by mary elizabeth frye. the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

i grew up thinking love had to be dramatic.

that it needed to feel like chaos—

a rush of adrenaline,

complicated, spontaneous, a constant guessing game.

and sure, love can be like that.

it can burn hot and fast.

it can throw you into the sky

and drop you just as quickly.

but love can also be secure.

reassuring.

constant.

and i think that kind of love is beautiful.

the kind where someone chooses you,

not because you’re hard to get

or because there’s tension and mystery,

but simply because they see you

and they want you.

no questions.

no confusion.

no waking up and wondering where you stand.

just—

you and them.

side by side.

quietly, naturally.

you know they’ll be there tomorrow.

and the day after that.

and in a week, a month, a year.

and suddenly, you’re celebrating your tenth anniversary,

realizing love didn’t need to be loud to be extraordinary.

i’m tired of dramatic love.

i don’t want to burn.

i want to be held.

i want love that is quiet.

predictable.

safe.

because peace is not the absence of love—

it’s what love is supposed to bring.

You ask me why I like you, and the words feel too earthbound—like cupping water in your palms and calling it the sea.

I could tell you about the way your voice feels like a lighthouse calling me home, or how your laugh cracks open my ribs, letting the wildflowers inside me bloom.

But none of it would be enough, not for this, not for you.

I like you because the world tilts in your direction, because every word you speak feels like the first page of a story I’ve always wanted to read.

And if I had no words, only silence, I’d still find a way to show you: my gaze resting, my breath steady, my being leaning toward you, always.

I love them,,,