Hey So I Know You’re Supposed To Challenge Your Thoughts When Your Mind Is Being Cruel And Unfair To

So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.

Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”

A list of all my short works in one place.

Links to some of my reflective posts! I'll be updating this whenever I post a new one.

The Letter

One Last Time

The Extension

When I First

The one I love the most

Broken vase

The Bus stop

Her

The Puzzle

this isn't my usual content, but something really struck me as i was visiting a part of the city unfamiliar to me today. and here is my takeaway:

I should not have to be afraid all the time. I should not have to look over my shoulder every ten minutes and be suspicious of every man in the vicinity. I should not have to scan a fucking public space, during broad daylight, for another woman to feel reassured. I should not have to maneuver the way I walk on a sidewalk, because something that has happened to others before can happen again. I should not have to avoid eye contact all the time just to feel semi-safe.

so why have we reached a point where this is normalized? I'm the one taking preventive measures and the people the law should be after don't even get apprehended properly more often than not. do we talk about the kolkata case anymore? we don't. mainstream media lost interest, at the end of the day. is it because actual justice was served? no.

and it's not as if this is far from me either. I don't think it's far from anyone.

there were a couple men that regularly roamed near my college who, according to firsthand reports, touched students inappropriately in the crowd. they were found. they were reported. we made a group chat to keep each other safe and updated. I was actually terrified of going that month. and the worst part? I don't know what happened to them. they disappeared, whether because they knew they were found or because they were apprehended, I don't know. or maybe they're still there, but all the students are too resigned to say anything anymore.

why?

because they were reported. and the enforcement said that one man in particular did it to 'go to jail for free food'. they would arrest him, keep him for a few months, then free him. so he did it again. and again. until the police were just used to it. I'm not saying the police don't do anything, because that would be inaccurate, but this incident still remains a part of my daily life. that is an institution I go to everyday. if I can't feel safe in my own locality after it's dark, if I can't feel safe at my college, if someone isn't safe in their own workplace, if I am constantly afraid whenever I go out alone... would you call that a safe country? a free one?

this isn't about any specific institution or political party or anything like that. this is about a rot that's been festering since the very beginning. something that should have been stamped out, but continues anyway.

we were promised a right to life with dignity.

this is not dignity.

I don’t care for vampire vegetarianism. It feels like an awfully strange thing to desire demons just to defang them.

Oh it still happens plenty. Issue is, most don’t know how to share it.

Finding someone who only has eyes for you is practically impossible nowadays.

Reason 2 to finish your manuscript:

Because you want to read it.

Ready, Set, Go…

What’s your favorite Hozier song? Why? No, you can’t say all of them. And don’t choose something stupid like cherry wine (there’s nothing wrong with cherry wine. Obviously. But gods man, have an actual opinion).

You are, however, perfectly welcome to list a handful in no particular order. Here, I’ll start,

Wildflower and Barley ft. Allison Russell

“(I feel as) useful as dirt, put my body to work.”

If this song does not fill you with the incredible longing to fall in love with life, and love, and dirt, you are listening to music wrong. I am sorry, you are beyond redemption.

To Noise Making (Sing)

“Your head tilt back, your funny mouth to the clouds. I couldn’t hope to know that song and all it’s words wouldn’t claim to feel the same it felt the first time it was heard.”

“Was it that or just the act of making noise that brought you joy?”

Enjoy the moment because it will not last, but rejoice in the knowledge that more are coming, as similarly meaningful and unique and impossible to duplicate to the one you are currently living!

Make music. Make bad music. Make music for the sake of exaltation. Make art because if you don’t then what is the point in living! Make art because one of the first things a child learns is to take marker to a wall, or pudding to a carpet. Make art because it is an expression of self. Make art because it is proof of life. Live.

Too Sweet

“Don’t you just want to wake up, dark as a lake? Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?”

Get drunk with your friends and skinny dip off a pier. Ignore the rules, what are they for anyway? Find meaning in how you see it. Confront the wild beast in the woods and let it merry meet the one in you.

Those church bells in the background- Are they ringing in a wedding, or a funeral? A simple Sunday Service, or acknowledging the hour? Life goes on, always. It’s the one continuity. It never stops. So what are you doing with it?

Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue)

“A cure I know that soothes the soul, does so impossibly. A moment’s silence when my baby puts the mouth on me.”

“When the meaning’s gone, there is clarity, and the reason comes on the common tongue of your loving me. And it’s easy done, our little remedy…”

Hot.

What, I can’t like music with an…oral focus? Too low brow? The beat and flow of the music takes you on a sensual journey as much as the lyrics.

Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene by Hozier, Fiachra Kinder, and Rory Doyle

“Jarring of judgement and reasons defeat, the sweet heat of her breath in my mouth, I’m alive.”

“With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean…”

“With her straw blonde hair, her arms hard and lean, she’s the angle of death and the codeine scene.”

I’m gay. Extraordinarily queer. Do I need to elaborate? This sound sounds like a death march. It sounds like the echo in your ears as you dance yourself to death. Years passing away in the span of a single dance and you don’t care, as long as she is your partner. You can’t manage to rip your eyes off her to save your life. You won’t.

Almost (Sweet Music)

“I’m almost me again…she’s almost you.”

It was Almost Sweet Music. We were Almost something. I’m Almost able to be normal about this song. Seperated by a pair of parenthesis, kept apart and yet part of the whole.

Foreigner’s God

“Her eyes look sharp and steady into the empty parts of me. But still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man’s beliefs.”

“I’ve no language left to say it, but all I do is quake to her. Break it if I try to convey it, the broken love I make to her.”

If you, somehow, have missed the message that Hozier’s music is incredibly political- If you have ignored Nobody’s Soldier, Eat Your Young, and oh, I don’t know, just about 70% of his discography… What do you think this song is about?

It’s also just a really fucking good song.

There’s a sorority named Omega Psi Phi.

Not usually what I think of when I hear someone say Omega Sci-Fi, but alright.

“Come back here,” he whimpered threateningly.

Use "said" for dialogue unless you are writing a man talking, in which case use "whimpered"

Some of my poems got accepted for the first issue of a lit magazine. I haven’t told anyone but my sister. I’m scared they’ll change their minds by the time the issue comes out, and I’ll have looked silly for thinking my work was worthy of publishing.