My eyelids get heavy, and i feel an instant urge to make today disappear by falling asleep until it’s tomorrow. But i can’t move.
The bag is me. I can’t explain why the bag is me, but the bag is me. I have been swinging and I have come to a complete stop. I have no idea why. I have no idea why anything. Like, why I’m here. Or why I stopped. Or why I was swinging.
I learned in English class about surrealists. It was the first time I wanted to throw myself up so I could be marked present. Surrealism turns the whole world upside down.
Friends act like friends.
Everything was windswept and octagonal and finger-combed.
Well, if it’s as easy as catching my future from a blood relative, then I guess I’m due to be a drunk, pregnant, dropout stripper any day now.
This is where the runaway train started down the track. I was inside the dining car enjoying a plate of cookies or something. I didn’t feel it then. But the train had been boarded on Saturday night when we drank the bat. And this was the beginning of its journey. Right here.
Graduation day means you must now do something with your life. You must grow up and buy your own train tickets, accrue student debt so you can become part of the machine. You must pick a major. The light comes only after that. Sorry about saying that graduation is the light at the end of the tunnel. That was a lie.
Nature is so lucky. People can look at it and think nothing. No one analyzes it. No one blames it. No one underestimates it. Most people respect it. When we look at an ocean after an oil spill, we don’t smirk and say, “Well, look at this shithole you are now!” We pity it. We wish it hadn’t happened. We hope it gets better and that the fish who live there don’t die or grow babies who have two heads. Maybe if we all saw ourselves as nature, we’d be kinder.
I don’t smile. I have all these thoughts. Crazy thoughts. Like, on the one hand, I want to kiss her passionately, like they do in movies, and just paralyze her with the feeling of how much I want to take care of her.
There is a moment in every photograph’s life when it has been exposed but not developed. The light from the enlarger has shone through the negative and made its impression on the paper, but without the magic of developer, the paper will stay white and no one will ever see what that impression is.
Never forget it. But stop living there. Live here, in the present. Think forward to your future.
New skin amazes me. New skin is a miracle. It is proof that we can heal.
Is it okay to lie in order to be happy?
I see it as symbolic. The label no longer fits. His emotional parsimoniousness just got sucked away by the beautiful blue sky. I lean forward and reach my hand behind my back, then take my sign off, and I toss it out the window, too. I am no longer an ex-stripper’s daughter, either. I have gone from invisible Vera Dietz to invincible Vera Dietz.
I love vocab. It’s like spelunking in a cave you’ve been in your whole life and discovering a thousand new tunnels.
If parents cared as much about raising kids as the chef cared about making this cake, the world would be a completely different meat grinder. Bruce can’t take a bite of his cake without.
The boys on the front had magazines with pinups, and they talked about how one day they would score women like that, but they’re kids. They don’t know what love is. Here they learn what hate is, and I am so sad that they might never know love because hate came first. Maybe they will miss out on having a woman like you, and I feel sorry for them.
We’re all just making it up as we go along. No one really knows what they’re doing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is talking out of their butt.
I can’t help seeing a cage for what it is. Sure, it protects the bulb, but maybe if people weren’t so careless, then nothing would need to be caged.