mad as rabbits.

already october. that'd freak me out if any year since 2019 had been real. luckily they haven't

Is there a hole in anyone else’s chest right now?

when e.e. cummings said “i’ll live my life if it kills me”

when andrea gibson said “i suppose i love this life, in spite of my clenched fist.” & when ellen bass said “to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it”

when james baldwin said, “this is why one must say yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found-and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is;”

when Mary Oliver said “it is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world”

when amy dunne said “my father, a mid-level phone company manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. at worst? he never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room. throwing things near her but not exactly at her. i’m sure he told himself: i never hit her. i’m sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. but he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun. don’t make me turn this car around. please, really, turn it around.”