woim city

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

May 24th: Murray Foust found dead in Kentucky, missing since April 27th.

May 18th: Eryka Caldwell murdered in Brooklyn.

May 10th: Juniper Blessing murdered at University of Washington.

May 6th: White House releases "counterterrorism strategy", including "transgender ideology" as a domestic threat.

the first ever pride flag (1978) versus the TMP movie poster (1979)

All the “green eyes” positivity is actually a bad thing, by the way. Having green eyes is linked to higher rates of retinal melanoma. You’re celebrating something dangerous that can cause suffering.

And besides, most people with “green eyes” lean closer to blue or brown anyways. They should just make up their minds and be brown eyed or blue eyed. And if it’s too hard to tell, they should get corrective surgery (because green eyes are dangerous, and associated with more difficult medical care!) or at the least wear contacts so they don’t confuse people. But also they should be required to

I hate to sound like this, but green eyes are a far more recent development than blue eyes in the mutagenic history of humans. So humans weren’t created to have green eyes.

And hazel eyes? Those are just a variant of brown eyes—come on, they’re far closer to brown than green. They just have a couple greenish traits. And there’s no way there’s that many green eyed people, or a wide variety of eye colors… It’s just not natural.

I don’t have a problem with green eyed people, they didn’t ask to be born that way—but there’s just too few of them for it to be an actual eye color. We don’t need all this “green eye positivity” or putting green eyes in media. The internet is making people delude themselves into thinking it’s more common than it really is.

‼️ THIS POST IS ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF INTERSEX PEOPLE ‼️

✅ I HAVE GREEN EYES THIS IS SATIRE ✅

⚠️ PLEASE DON’T SEND ME ANY MORE THREATS OF VIOLENCE IN DEFENSE OF PEOPLE WITH GREEN EYES?? ⚠️

before i watched project hail mary i knew exactly 2 things about ryan gosling: