behind our efforts

this city needs healing.

“You are my creator, but I am your master!”

Alecto was angry, and raised her up, and kissed her. The child did not cry out, though blood fell from her lips and tongue, and she was wounded sore. For Alecto knew not how to kiss, except such as it involved the mouth and teeth. And Alecto said to her, Why are you not appeased? That is how meat loves meat.

“Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed, although I curse myself, be the hands that formed you!”

"Save us, Hunter, oh please save us... from the horrors of this accursed unsightly beast!"

2. she’s back

by Joseph Fasano

Love the small things of the earth. The dust. The dark rain in the lemon trees. The sound of moonflowers opening at evening. Love them even when the sky is burning, even when a mother crouches with her child in a dark room, wetting his lips with a small glass of water. Love them quietly, quietly but ferociously, their hearts in them like flocks the wind has furled.

And then, in the spring, if the world has survived, walk out with your gift that you have practiced, your fresh gift that has ripened in secret; lie down in the long, soft grass of summer and wait for love, wait for it to find you, and when it lays its hand at last upon your shoulder, open to all that is about to happen; rise up and walk off into the lemon trees

and live awhile, live awhile with someone — their eyes, their scent, their curls — and when love departs, when love is done and fallen, stand there in the coming winds of autumn and turn back to the small things that have been with you — buttons, apples, chapters — and then, because you've practiced this forever, because you are ready now for the hardest task of all of them,

After all the trouble to give it to her... What a waste.