So What Can You Do?

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

Hi! do you happen to have any masquerade prompts by chance? Perferably something between two characters with a love-hate dymanic?

We didn’t see this until just now!!! Sorry for the wait

1. Your characters getting along all night, until one of their mask breaks and then it’s right back to the contempt. ( and some confusing new feelings)

2. Your rival wore the same outfit. You now have to try and ruin it as quickly as you can so they go home and change

3. One of your characters thinking they know who the other character is at the ball and being embarrassingly wrong.

4. One searching the whole party for any evidence the other one came.

5. In the weeks before the ball, one launching a campaign to figure out if the other is coming without directly asking.

6. Ditching the approved date to be with this new stranger ( the rival in a mask).

7. Anger that the other one was even invited to the event.

Hope this helps!!!

Precious

The puppy is no longer young but he is still small and fits in the crook of my arm like a sleeping babe all sleep-warm and honey-slow blinking up at me with wide black eyes.

I hold his tiny face in my cupped careful palms press a kiss into the wisp-light fur at the nape of his neck and tell him like a vow: You are so good and so precious and so beloved.

And a soft, gentle thing in the cavern of my chest slowly rises to reply heartbeat-quiet: We are. We are. We are.

- by sylvie (j.p.)

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry but I want you to be too

I want to look down on you while you gasp and cry and feel the pain you caused me

and I think my therapist would say that that doesn't make me a bad person but I think it does

Because you can articulate the pain I caused you and I can't do that to mine I can just feel it but oh god I caused that hurt and I'm so sorry so sorry so sorry

But I want you to be sorry t—

The panels of the staircases are soft with cobwebs, but nobody seems to mind.

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

Transfiguration's gonna come for me at last And I will burn hotter than the sun

I'll tell you a secret: I felt like I was better. It couldn't happen to me. I was worldly and supported and had a plan and I spoke well and in 2 languages. The world was waiting to unlock itself to my potential. Back then, I had the secret fear that the world was too small for me.

And it happened anyway. The terrible cliché I felt too good for. I got stuck in the home town. Plans didn't work, and suddenly almost a year had passed and I'd spent it in an internship that was my plan H in a place that was my plan Never. And now, with bloody fingernails, I've held on to the easiest dream I had. Not even the pretty, big ones that I thought I'd conquer for fun and joy. The easy one. And I'm sick. Two years at a minimum, first time I've been sick like this. I can do nothing.

Time is running out and university is drawing closer and I was sixteen in a school I hated and I PROMISED myself I wouldn't let it come to this. I wouldn't cave. I'd take the time I want and I'd see the world and I thought I was so prepared. I thought the world was waiting for me. I thought I was so privileged. I thought that meant everything would be butterflies.

Why can't it be butterflies.

"I love you , I'm glad we're friends"