l'appel du vide

the car broke down by the denny's where you used to work and therefore could never return to. i am trying to pick out the satisfying parts of my life, one-by-one, like i am 12 and in a frog dissection. everything in my life all viscera and formaldehyde. if i can sort the good things from the bad things, i will have a nice clean pile.

i call you and make it sound like i am happy and hangin' in there! when really i am kicking a rock and i am outside without a jacket and i am so in love with you it makes the little bones in my ear shake. someone called my tinnitus an angel choir. i like that it means i carry the echo of every concert.

this isn't the right setting for love. this is a roadside, and a denny's, and i am nauseous and ashamed i never escaped the town where i grew up. the clouds here are this strange yellow, like spilled sour milk. "someone once told me that the orange coating on the teeth of a beaver is due to the particularly high rate of iron in their enamel," i tell you. "the beaver is the largest rodent native to north america."

your voice is crackly on the other end. i'm going into a garage soon, i might lose you.

what i should be doing is calling the tow truck and explaining that my brother's car (that i'm borrowing) (that i broke now, i guess) needs to be lifted by another, bigger, stronger car (which is love too, i guess).

i shouldn't say so much. i should wait, and let you ask about my mom, and ask if i ever got over that cold, or how it's going at work. i should let you lead the conversation, for once, so the love doesn't leak out of me into the gravel. i open my mouth anyway. "if you had to choose between being a beaver with very few trees or being a tree around a bunch of beavers, which would it be?"

i don't know. your voice always has this warm cast to it when you talk to me, but maybe i am just imagining that - i am a poet, though, so i imagine things sort of chronically. through the static, you sound like you're laughing. are you the beaver?

i know, like, logically, not to fall in love with a girl-that-is-your-best-friend. like, who would i even call if we broke up? you're my best friend, you're the person i'd want to speak to. so what if these last few months we keep sleeping over at each other's houses, calling each other for hours, sending each other poems. so what if you keep wrapping your fingers into mine. no best friends. that is the first rule. what you are supposed to do in that situation is leave the situation.

but my car broke down, so. where exactly am i going to go? the car is a very-old chevvy and also where i almost-but-not-quite kissed you after you'd raised one shoulder and looked up at me and said i don't know, i think i'm straight, but for the right person - i'd try anything. the music had been good and it had been raining and your thick eyelashes had made me feel god crawling up my throat like a spider. and i didn't kiss you, because i am a coward.

anyway on the chevy the whole exhaust pipe fell out, and is now scraping on the ground like one silver finger stroking the back of the highway. recently we were watching netflix in my bed and you pushed my hair back from my face like you were making the slowest, most desperate prayer, and then your boyfriend called. i remember us both jumping. i couldn't look at you in the eyes for like a week after. i kept feeling the heat of your fingerprint; computer science, you'd unlocked something dark in me.

google says the closest tow (joe's pick up) is 50 minutes away and also closed permanently. so that's not great. you live in another state and i should be calling my insurance company. i should be calling anybody else. this is not helping. i need an uber. i need to get moving. instead i say: "i need three words for a poem."

yesterday i said love you, goodnight after our 2 hour call like always and then you just, like. paused. all i could hear was your breathing. and then you'd said what a pretty three-word poem. i love you too, sweet thing. the words made my tinnitus act up again, and i must have some kind of synesthesia, because the sound travelled into my mind until it became the shape wedding rings.

orange, you say. the static is now chewing through most of your words and i only catch - borrowing the chevy -

the call dies. i have 12% battery. i never get the 3rd word, but i know you're still going to get a poem from me. actually this rest stop is kind of pretty, and so is the exhaust pipe, and so is joe's pick up, and so are the clouds. the light here is the color of a glue trap. before you worked at the denny's, we used to get milkshakes every wednesday and called it a friend date. you said you'd wanted to work there because it reminded you of me.

the sign's gone dim. the letters now spell out deny. and isn't that something.

neil josten is a bit of a creature in my mind, but not in any sensible way. he’s a creature because how many person-suits can you drape over your skeleton before the human part dissolves and you’re just a mix of crooked teeth and mismatched skin tissue? he’s a creature because his eyes hold galaxies and because his words are talons and beaks. and he’s a creature because he deserves a pair of mischievous horns peeking out of the flurry of his hair. but he’s also completely human (unless you see him bathed in the moonlight from the corner of your eye. then he’s mist and haze and rust and old creaking door)

just saw someone call andreil toxic....?????

anyway andreil is the healthiest relationship built entirely on trust, respect, and consent

The foxes are maybe the most interesting iteration of the found family trope I've ever seen. They love each other. They hate each other. They spend half their time fighting. They literally hide behind each other when threatened. They call each other slurs. They're all gay and date each other. They're mentally ill and traumatised. They're so problematic it's ridiculous. Canonically three of them are murderers. They have a massive sleepover where they all snuggle together .Some of them have about two lines of dialogue together. What the fuck

(voice of a man slowly losing his mind) does it ever strike you that the plot of aftg is moved by little acts of kindness kevin offered to people who never had any semblance of it before. loving riko when no one would, befriending jean in the nest and keeping him alive through debilitating amounts of trauma, telling andrew he was worth it in a dingy high school locker room, teaching neil every night even if he knew he was about to die

sick maple trees keep breaking into little pieces on this street, their limbs dusting in wood choreography. yesterday when i thought of a joke, i started messaging you the punchline. we don't talk anymore, and your number is saved as DONT in my phone. it's finally snowing in boston. it was supposed to be winter about 4 months ago. these days when i tilt my head up and open my mouth, nothing falls in; everything falls out. i feel like a jackrabbit, my heart all blanket-thick like i can't breathe past whatever thing we weren't-really-doing.

we weren't together but you met my mom but we weren't together but my dog loves you but we weren't together but i still kept the candle you got me for christmas because you said it reminded you of our first not-a-date experience. your birthday is saved in my phone. i still use the recipe from your mom. i think i have half your shirts and you know where my earring went. you can keep it, i guess.

okay, i'm over it, because i have to be over it, because this isn't a letter you can send. this is boston in january, and someone whipped up both hands to flip me off after they used a turning lane wrong. this is boston in the wake of you, with nobody knowing the shape of your footprint. i keep hearing the song we didn't quite write together. i keep feeling dizzy in the shower. you can't want something that wasn't meant for you when you've been raised catholic. my dad would get a kick out of the irony of this, his little deacon hands laying prayer into the situationship. i'm supposed to be better about falling down, i've done it enough times by now to know the distance to the ground. something in here is good too - something about a church girl and finding god. you would have loved that, said it reminded you of how memories are a house with a view.

the punchline was really funny by the way. where do koalas get their medication from. pharmarsupials.

i love you. i'm sorry whatever we had wasn't real enough for you.

you have to be sexy but you have to be sexy in a way that's kind of bloody. you learn this early because you are wearing a ruffled skirt and the snow around your ankles kicks little sand particles against your calves. baby's first catcall. welcome to sexiness! welcome to the eyesore of your own body!

you have to be sexy like high heels. like sculpted eyebrows. like lean stomach and highly treated hair. you have to be sexy like youth is sexy, which means you have to be sexy like boxtox and plastic. a 30 year old can be sexy but she's not going to be bloody, and they like the bloodiness of it. a 30 year old is sexy when she is a whiskey glass and a wooden desk.

but you need to be sexy like an open mouth. you need to be sexy like a bitten apple. like plucked skin and white-knuckling the waxing kit.

so sex is a performance, not an enjoyment. for a while, you just assumed everyone else was also in on the joke - nobody actually likes sex that much, right? like, some men probably do, but why would you? it is like a gender - your gender is sexy. your gender is the performance of sex. you are thigh highs and garter belts. which, to be fair, do make you feel sexy.

part of what does make sex good is that you can tell that other people want you, which means the performance of sexiness is both bloody and wanted, which is good, which means you are winning at having a body. being wanted is the prize. being wanted is the thing you are searching for, not hope. you think you are looking for a soft grave in easy loam, but that is bloody but not sexy. to be sexy you must be bloody like a red open sign. bloody like a handprint. this will make you wanted.

any wanted or unwanted body is subject to supply and demand, which is to say that the more demand, the better you are valued. you must be highly demanded to be valued. this is stated in matter-of-fact by some men. sometimes it is a priest that says it, and sometimes it is a podcaster, and sometimes it is the 45th president of the united states of america.

(if you do not have any experience with being told your value, i want you to grab the nearest bird to you and i want you to crush it into a thin paste in your hand. spit into the center, and then hold your fingers closed tight around it for days and days, long after the rot has set in. feel bones itch inside of your fist. this is only a fraction of what it actually feels like, but it will suffice for a moment.)

good sex feels like you have earned their desperation. you have earned your own value. for a while you operated under the understanding that everyone knew about the power structure, even him. that their desire to take you - the violence of it - means that you must desire to be caught. little prince, guardian fox - you would rather have cut your own arm off. you liked the secret, cunning little voice you keep tucked into a box. you think you are fucking me. i am not even here right now. you are fucking what i conned you into perceiving. this is a painting, not a person. dominion over the body before all things.

so you bend your body like a wheat shaft and learn the steps so perfectly that it almost seems graceful. (if you do not have experience faking your own connection to your body and sexuality, cut each of your articles of clothing just a little bit incorrectly. pour fishbones into each of your meals. this way, you will experience the average noon on a tuesday.)

you have to be sexy like light spilled over a desk, but not desperate. not a noose. you can't be sexy like an electric guitar, you are the acoustic. you have to be on top of the bull but you can't have control over the animal.

okay, okay. the little rabbit of your heart went to sleep so long ago that winter has ravaged your concept of the human soul. there's something very-bad inside you, something that has taken over, a little fetid and rabid animal, angry and hurting and willing to bite first.

oh but even that's a pain that's sexy. open your mouth. be careful not to let the canines show.

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.

am i gonna put you in the book acknowledgements am i gonna be able to say your name without flinching am i ever gonna get a word in edgewise am i ever gonna recover the time i spent with you. computer virus kid; i arrived in your life already begging to be let in. somehow insecure i could even be your friend. like you had a line outside the door and we were all shifting our weight, begging.

you're so fucking good at that - at making people feel like they need to earn you, like you're a commodity none of us can afford. no kindness or careful communication could work on you - you were so good at just going-ghost, about deciding someone just wasn't cool-enough. something about that is super ironic. even the parts of it that weren't romantic felt like a romance book. i wanted you to like me so badly i scrubbed myself clean just so you'd spare me - what. your favor? a look?

okay okay okay. it's just a friendship - if it was even true that we were friends, if you even saw me as someone you trusted. on reddit someone would tell me girl literally just cut her out of your life, it's not that difficult. even i was aware of how fucked up the whole situation was. like, why the fuck do i even care about your approval? you're like, not even that fun to be around. you are often a little bit cruel.

but for almost four years of my life, i thought i had found someone like me. somebody who liked the same things i do. someone who liked to read and who liked making jokes with esoteric references and who spent maybe too much time on the internet and who was absolutely a little bit pretentious. i don't know, something about that was powerful and addictive.

i keep thinking about our last conversation. about how i said - okay, enough is enough. you pushed me too far, you really hurt my feelings.

and how you laughed and said - you think you're the victim?

it's hard to explain because inevitably you sound like an asshole, but some people are allowed to lose their temper, lose their mind - you're not, though.

when your friend never texts you first and misses your birthday and never makes an effort; you don't mind. you know she's struggling, and you want her to get the help that she deserves. you give her every excuse and every chance.

it shouldn't matter to you so much that people are always coming through for her. you want her to be happy, you love it for her. you love that her community rises up to the occasion. why does it bother you that when she snaps at someone, says horrible mean things - but two hours later, everyone is comforting her while she's crying. you know she's stressed. why do you kind of hate that she is welcomed back to her job, that her parents are endlessly wiring her money.

and you're - fuck, are you envious?

but when you don't text back, someone sits you down and says i know you're struggling, but you're being a bad friend. when you're too numb to show up for work, your boss just shakes his head. i'm sorry. i can't approve more time off. we have the company to protect. when you finally snap back at your family for making that shitty comment again, you're forced to apologize for being too sensitive.

god forbid you need something. people aren't used to you being the one asking. you're the giver like the book you hated; your pages all open and rumpled. you always have the answer, always have the solution. you are reliable, trustworthy. people like you don't struggle with things. you're supposed to be lifted by tragedy. you are given a maximum of 24 hours to grieve, and then you need to just behave at the party.

you can't read the giving tree without feeling like crying, and even that feels like it's too much emotion. like, nobody looks at you and assumes you're the tree; they'd name five other people before even considering you in the running. you're just there, never-asking.

your friend gets to say mean shit, that's just her personality. when you make a snide comment, you're just being petty. people laugh when your friend stands you up for another event; they say she's just like that. you were 5 minutes late to a meeting with friends and they were mad about it for the rest of the evening. your friend sets everything on fire; everyone applauds her through the ashes. you so much as light a candle: and suddenly now you're an arsonist.

you don't want your friend to suffer, though. the thing is that you just wish that the empathy and kindness your friend gets - you wish you had that option, that everyone offered you grace and money and a gentle reception.

the other day you were fighting down the bad urge; the void call, the end note. you tried-anyway. you went to the family event, tried laughing at the right moments. nodded and smiled and all of it. one of your siblings threw a fit, but she's allowed to, so everyone just rolled their eyes about it. you took 3 whole minutes to stand outside when you got overwhelmed. you literally set a timer about it.

in the morning you woke up to a text from your parents: you were a complete disgrace last night. idk what your attitude problem is, but you really need to fix it.

but you see her on instagram and it was never really said that you guys aren’t friends but one day she stopped answering and you stopped texting and it’s not like the wound is a cavern but it is a diagram of what if in red letters. you want to tell her nice lipstick that’s a good color but the last time you spoke it was stilted and awkward 

how do you say goodbye, you know? it’s not an unfriend and block kind of situation. but you watch the people you once loved go on and have a life and you’re outside of it. and it’s bittersweet because of course it’s okay that you’re both thriving. but she used to be who you’d call if you needed to cry. she used to be who’d you’d be binge watching the new series with. you used to be hers, in a way, even if that way wasn’t permanent. and now she’s someone else and so are you and your friendship is clicking heart shapes next to pictures where she smiles next to people you’ve never met. you know where her birthmark is. she knows where you’ve buried your dead.

the poets and the singers and the authors write about romantic love when it ends. but nobody tells you how to get over a friend.

Museum of

museum of weird personalities. museum of talking slow on a sunday. museum of wiggling in excitement. of little toy trains handpainted and arranged on a to-scale platform complete with little trees. museum of the obscure animal names you learned while you couldn't sleep. of sewing pockets into things. of humming. of dressing wildly. museum of not knowing when to join in a conversation. of not being sure if you even like me. museum of talking too fast or too loud. of being too annoying. museum of missed opportunities. of being late. of up-all-night-crying. of begging yourself to please fucking get it together. museum of all the appointments you were supposed to make. museum of hyperfixation. of the one food you could eat every day and still be happy to consume. museum of colored glass and winespills and cartography. of blending in. museum of masks, of the people you've been. museum of learning how to be a real person like hopscotch squares; body shaking, 1-2-3 go, doubledutch jobs and school and wanting more. museum of board games and anime and real-play podcasts and obsessed-with-fantasy. museum of the books you devoured in middle school, museum of every copy of dragonology, museum of esoteric autobiographies. museum of the joy of being unusual. of barefoot on moss and running your hands through the rock section in a giftshop and needing to cut the tags on your clothes off. museum of leaving the party early and of little birds singing and of full-moon wolfgirl howling. museum of rabbitfur and filling a room with laughter and claymation. museum of pizza rolls and lunchables and just white bread and a single slice of baloney. museum of telling stories. museum of the divine power in our creative forces. of gift giving. of being too much. of loving someone like your blood is a star that burst. of held hands and radio turned up and of belting misery business so loud that your speakers shake. museum of cough drops and advil and dropped calls. museum of wanting to kiss you while we stood in that bedroom and thinking better of it. museum of fucking up. museum of risks. museum of the yellow light captured from every summer where you felt every moment like ah, this is one i'm gonna miss. museum of godspeed. of calling your therapist. of saying i fucking feel like an alien. of pill bottles you are trying to make into an art project. of unfinished works-in-progress. of beautiful, expressive mess.

museum and altar of trying-anyway. museum of - ah, fuck it, i'm here. i might as well stay.

i had a dream last night that you apologized. it was for real this time. my hands shook while i read it; waiting for you to do the thing you always do - chewing on my lip, i was waiting for you to make it about you. waiting for the part where everything shifts and suddenly - again! - i'm taking care of you.

it's never really your fault, something is always "happening" for you. you always have an excuse. it's hard to explain because my heart is too gentle. i keep finding reasons to forgive your repeated actions. i keep saying well, you didn't have it easy or that was a hard time or maybe i just upset you enough for that reaction. i talk about how i was a troubled kid once. i talk about how people stuck by me when i went dark. i give you what i never got.

i texted my siblings about it: you ever remember something and then get mad about it all over again. and still, that little voice inside my head - did i not explain myself explicitly enough? am i being unfair? the boundary i drew had been communicated, but what if i should have given more chances for you to get used to it?

i had a dream you finally saw things my way. that you said - i realized why you were hurting. i caused that. i'm sorry. i had a dream that i know i'm going to have to talk about in therapy.

you want to know the worst part? i would forgive you pretty much instantly. i would roll over and let you back into my life immediately. i would tell everyone that you've turned over a new leaf. i would defend you like an attorney. i'd say how you've been working hard and finally apologized to me. i'd tell them all that the bare-minimum from you was finally showing.

that's all it would take. a single, real i'm sorry. and it's knowing that you can't do it. it's knowing you will never, ever take responsibility.

sometimes i think about how a summer can bend itself into a pocket and how when you meet someone special their name folds in that same way. it slips between your particles.

oh, wildheart. i looked up at you and felt something tear me asunder. the ripple of space and time, to press us closer together. i think i have met you in a past life. i think i am perfect for you in this life, or that i could teach myself how to immolate and love the burning. the atmosphere cannot contain angels. i am going to give myself wings and come over and kneel at your altar. i will reinvent superimposition so our shadows can hold hands in space.

oh light. in this world i am too many weird limbs and bad eyesight. in this world i will wrap myself in the blanket of a tree and whisper myself into a new something. light and fast and sleek - something closer to you. something worthy.

i feel you as a compass. harness of direction. like everything else is moving and you're the voice of stillness. one of these days i am going to draw a map of myself and you will fill up all the branches. have i ever belonged to someone like this; so ragged and quick. like my heart knew your heart before either of us resolved ourselves out of the blackness. like i hatched with you in me, already imprinted.

i spend so much time trembling, my hands outstretched, searching. in the dark, you found me. go on, you said. keep walking.

{Hannah Green, from "Are you still hungry, Mother?"/ Unknown/Sam Gordon, "A Mother's Hate"/ Ella Wilson/ Joan Tierney/ Ella Wilson/ Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous/ Unknown/ Nayyirah Waheed/ Sharon Olds, “Holding To A Wall, Treading Saltwater”/ John Green, Turtles All the Way Down/ Safia Elhillo, "an inheritance," published in Narrative Northeast/ Annie Ernaux, from I Remain in Darkness/ Poplar Street by Chen Chen/ Unknown/ Tumblr User: @inkskinned/ Elena Poniatowska, from "La Flor de Lis," published c. January 2011/ Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom}

idk why people seem to think that if you love pink you hate black or vice versa. Black and pink are not opposing colors in fact they are best friends that kiss sometimes

sky is blue and i love robins and my emailbox is full and i love making things for my friends and the ground is frozen and it hasn't snowed this winter which means it'll be a drought this summer again. sky is blue and yesterday i saw a proposal happen on top of a mountain while walking my dog and listening to a dnd podcast and i wasn't lonely i was just kind of awkwardly worried i was ruining the moment and later i spent 4 hours on the floor making a stupid little project.

can i be okay for real this time. can it last. can the horror and the anxiety and the great vast numb horizon all silence themselves and stand like statues at the edge of my soul, only a memory of these things that used to be so powerful. i want to spend the rest of my life in a meadow. i want to spend the rest of my life in a tea party. i want the rest of my life to only lapse in quiet waves instead of the slow advance of acid pools.

sky is blue and i've spent the last year in a hole. i completely burned through 2022. sky is blue and i couldn't look at the moon for months before this week, i was too ashamed for her to see. last year around this time i told my therapist i'm lost i'm lost i'm lost i'm drowning and before i stopped and said - sorry for the hysterics like my dissolving was only a performance. sky is blue and i am still afraid of rabbits and i am still living in a hole with broken glass and ants and it is still winter and i am still so tired and yet! and yet!

can i be okay? can i finally make my way out of this. it doesn't have to be perfect, i don't need that, i'm okay if it means a little work, i guess. it would just be nice for it to exist.

sky is blue. i keep waiting to hear the bird in my chest.

a lot of fatphobia exists in extremely puritanical ideas wrapped in modern aesthetics.

it is "justified" if you are bullied, because you were sinful and have not repented your ways. this is the lord's punishment to you. if you wanted it to be different, you would need to go back within the church and accept their god.

others are asking for you to change because it is a matter of spiritual health. they are not your doctor, they are not your friend, they know nothing about your health status; but they feel confident that you can be Saved, the way they know others are Saved.

if you find flaws in their church - such as the massive amounts of money exchanged - you're excommunicated. what do you mean you can be happy outside the church? this is happiness - but we will make sure to torment and deride you if you have somehow found joy without our help.

it's just stating a fact! those that accept the Church are Saved and therefore beautiful and able to be loved and wed and cherished. it's not our fault if our "preference" for others is an incredibly traditional and meek follower of the church. what do you mean that those aesthetics are strange and unnatural? why would the church care if the human body ages? you just have to pray harder when you get older, it's part of life.

there is an epidemic of visibly sinful ones ("i saw a particularly slothful one in a walmart, and they minorly inconvenienced me!"), so we are justified in our actions. no, we haven't actually, like, done anything to help others, but we've been holy our whole lives, so we know the secret to success. or we recently repented, and now we know "anyone can do it". if we shame everyone who is not in the church, they'll eventually break down. we're doing god's work. it is our place to judge.

you must starve yourself and commit yourself to some kind of penance over a long period of time to repent for your previous wrongdoing. may we suggest one of our programs that are super expensive and not scientifically proven? what do you mean that your difficulties with the church stem from more complicated social, political, economic, and environmental factors than "just trying harder"?

once you have tried hard enough, we will love you again. you can have your human rights back! but right now you're not repentant enough, so it's okay if we don't consider you to be fully human.

what do you mean it's bullying? it's just us trying to help. don't get so heated. it's just incomprehensibly harsh judgement.

i have been thinking about anger. i have been thinking about the way i suck my teeth when i’m holding back on saying something. i have been thinking about the veins in the back of my hands, and how i grit my teeth when i know i’m overreacting. once, in chemistry, my professor said - women are often angry differently. i have been wondering about that.

if i am angry, it is angry like hungry. if i am angry, it is angry like a closed door. three days ago, i sat through a seminar where a woman twice my age complained about how hard it is to find good help these days.

the man folds his legs over the extra chair and looks at me. “diversity hire, huh? how’s that feeling?”

i am trying to make my anger into a honed space, like turning iron from a bee storm. anger can be an effective protector. anger can be not-again and anger can be you-won’t-hurt-anyone. anger wins where sorrow loses. i get out of bed because i am angry how the administration’s policy is effecting my students - i go to sleep shaking, almost-lost-my-job-again, wondering what-the-fuck-i-think-i’m-doing. but i wake up angry.

if i am angry, it is angry like my mother. i hold the butter knife and pull my shoulders up and wash the dishes while he plays video games in my bed. i am angry like nagging. i am angry like: i just gave up and let him keep relaxing - i knew it was my job, both the cleaning and the remembering-to-clean. i am angry like i have been crying in the shower. i am angry like a raised welt. i am angry like - foolish.

the newspaper shakes out onto our kitchen table. she reads me the numbers for the dying and then has to stop because she gets too nauseous at the way everything is spiking. we sit in silence and read the same article - protests demand climate action.

i am angry at myself. i am angry i haven’t figured out how to teach better over zoom. i am angry i haven’t actually finished that project. i am angry that i haven’t worked out in a little while, and that i never got around to reading that book, and that i let any man touch me while laughing as if it was nothing. i am angry for all the ways i have failed and all the ways i am still failing and all the ways i am not-trying-hard-enough. i am angry like i am my own sapphired edge - i am the sluice of everything i wasn’t quite good enough to be, and i am worse. i am angry like my own worst nightmare.

i fold the pamphlet my doctor gives me. “i really recommend physical therapy”, she warns. “it’s just going to get worse, eventually.”

i cannot afford physical therapy. “i’ll look into it,” i promise. i am not going to be back. i cannot afford sickness or chronic pain - so i just deal with it, like navigating the razor of a fact.

i am angry like a bell. i am angry like a stampede, i am angry like a loose tooth. i am angry like a splinter or a burning church. i have been angry so long that i am worried there is nothing left in me but the rage; all-encompassing. i am the angry feminist that ruins the meeting and the angry relative that ruins thanksgiving and the angry bitch who ruins the joke he was making. so what. all this work i do, and the world keeps turning.

anger is a secondary emotion - it springs from another place, another need. it protects and divides and allows our softer sides to slip away tenderly. i tell him how she hurt me and i say - “i think she’s angry because she’s lonely.”

he rubs his jaw. “yeah. but angry people stay lonely.”

it isn’t a beautiful thought. but something in it it feels lovely.