aurelia

Happy Black History Month!

cover image for The Gay Liberator, January 1972

I say a lot of things about my father. He's aggressive, dismissive, and self-centered. And yet I can't help but pity him. I see how his eyes look when he sits alone at the dinner table. This wasn't the life he envisioned for himself when he was a young man. He likes to say he doesn't need to prove himself to anyone but lies to his coworkers for validation. He puffs his chest and criticizes himself in the mirror. He swears it's a habit he wants to break. I'd like to think that that's what he sees when he yells at me and my brother. His father taught him that real men don't cry. I guess what I mean to say is that he's still a small child trying to be a man. He's failed. And I could try to hug him, give him the comfort he's never felt, but he'd push me away. He's a scared boy who doesn't know what he's doing here.

Haight-Ashbury,1967. Photo by Ruth-Marion Baruch

Courtney Love peeping

doc luben “love letters or suicide notes”/ louise glück/ liv ullmann/ funeral-phoebe bridgers/ @mjalti/ would’ve, could’ve, should’ve- taylor swift/ @fairycosmos/ rob bresney/ @sea--shore/ class of 2013- mitski

Confessional // Sue Zhao

Cain, José Saramago (trans. Margaret Jull Costa)

Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth (1948) American Teenager by Ethel Cain @mothercain (2022)

5am

Cain, José Saramago (trans. Margaret Jull Costa)