Li Shangyin, From When Will I Be Home? (tr. By Kenneth Rexroth)

ghosting

My brain, having a meltdown like a toddler: I just can’t do it! I don’t want to !! I can’t!!

Me, parenting my tired toddler brain: Take a deep breath, it’s going to be ok. We don’t have to do everything today that’s overwhelming you. Let’s pick the most important thing to work on, ok? What’s the smallest step we can do to work towards that?

My toddler brain, wiping away tears: Um, I think we should...open up the important spreadsheet and look at the first row.

Me, parenting my tired toddler brain: Great! Let’s do that, and then we can have a popsicle, ok?

My toddler brain: *nods through drying tears, upset, but cooperative*

The pit 🥚

Night sky

He asked me when I fell in love with him and I knew it sounded dramatic to say the moment I saw him, so I told him this story of my grandma who had Alzheimer's- she forgot her name and the words for fruit and food, she forgot her address and how to use the washroom, all her life lost to the disease. The only thing she remembered was her son's name and when that began to fade, the one thing she always remembered was that she loved him, even in illness, even in insanity. She saw this 6 foot 2 man with a scrubby beard and she didn't know him but she said she trusted him, she asked him to hold her hand when she died. When does memory end and love begin? All I know is- she loved him before she remembered him.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

GROWING PAINS

david wojnarowicz / alexander harding / su xinyu / @pearpoem / lorde / open house (1998) / billy collins / mitski / as i was moving ahead occasionally i saw brief glimpses of beauty (2000) / alain de bottom / hollis brown thornton / kalyn roseanne

Confessional // Sue Zhao

september, s.t.