inkskinned
Red Blood, Black Ink
8K posts
A place to put my poetry away. Preorder my book "Body's A Bad Monster" out Sept 24.24 writing insta: @rid.inkskinned
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inkskinned · 17 hours ago
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it is november, and yesterday it felt like it was supposed to be snowing. in boston, november used a winter month, not a fall month. it is supposed to be chilly; rarely capping over 45F. it is a sweater-and-jacket month. it is a "maybe a scarf too" month. in my childhood, november meant blizzards and sleet.
it did not snow. tomorrow the weather predicts a high of 76.
i have spent so many years of my life studying the longterm possibilities of climate change - the culmination of capitalism wreaking havoc on the bodies of people, animals, plants - but every so often i am still shocked by something small and personal.
in a hundred years, when someone goes outside in boston - will they know the feeling of "snow in the air"?
i know it's a learned feeling, a sensation that maybe only longterm experience can teach. a few years ago, i was walking with my friend who had just moved up from the south. i said it smells like snow and she gave me this look like - what the fuck. i said it feels like snow too, which didn't help. she looked up to the bright blue sky and then back at me and then back at the sky. 12 hours later, we had 3 inches. you can just tell if it's going to snow.
except i can't tell, anymore. i stand outside in a tee shirt and watch my dog dance around a lake. we're in a drought and the skin of the water has peeled back twenty meters. the lake is tamed, quiet, puddlelike and sour. my pokemon go app warns there's a weather condition in my area.
my dog gets too hot from running and sits in the water and i want to laugh about his long frame and how awkwardly he sits - and i can't. some simian part of my brain is scratching the walls. it was supposed to snow. it was supposed to snow, but now it's warm instead.
during the last full solar eclipse, the dogs and the birds and the crickets went crazy under utter darkness. we laughed at them then, promising it will all be okay in a moment. but some part of me is still locked in that long night: some animal sensation.
something is wrong, my body says. i can't afford eggs or rent. i go outside to watch a sunset and listen to birdsong. i don't bring a jacket. allergies are killing me this season, allergies i didn't have as a kid. everyone comments that halloween has started to feel strange, offkilter. that it's hard having "holiday cheer." my body thinks it's april, and then it thinks we're in september, and then june.
something is terribly wrong, she whispers. go outside. it is supposed to be snowing.
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inkskinned · 9 days ago
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having good & true friends will literally save and protect you in a million unfathomable ways. like okay we have written so many times about lovers. but the way a platonic friend laughs and cries with you. the way they hold your hand at 14 years old and at 34. the way they keep a little silver tie to you, touching base over and over and over. how you can go years without talking, only to re-meet and discover: oh shit! you're still cool!
there are people who have been in my life for more than half of it, and i have loved every version of them. do you know how fucking beautiful that is. yeah love will save the world. but the way friends love you is gonna save the you.
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inkskinned · 10 days ago
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every week someone else is new on the internet and it can be you and it could save your life and it could make you money and it could have corporations in your comments calling you cute and sexy and beautiful and isn't that lovely?
i had a nightmare of a future where at red lights and stop signs, an ad would play across the stoplight. advertisers had sold it as "encouraging drivers to pay more attention." i woke up covered in thin sweat, grateful i don't live there yet.
i am playing video games with my girlfriend, make a twitch stream. i am good at makeup, make a youtube. i am good at crafts and mildly funny. tiktok and instagram and brand deal paid partnership.
commodity! make yourself a commodity! in this economy if you land the dehumanization of advertisement that's a godsend. get that bag! chase that coin! good luck paying off your student loans! make yourself a billboard. karl marx crawling in his grave, paint yourself as capitalist hellscape. show your followers. be terribly alone. build an empire of bone.
run, rat! run! but first, check to see if your fur is sleek. for that all-natural glow, check the link in bio.
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inkskinned · 14 days ago
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u know what i miss. when people used to talk about their favorite dinosaur. today mine is the tiny terror compsognathus longipes. their name means dainty jaw. they were, like, chicken-sized. when i was 7 i really wanted one as a pet and cried about it. i assumed we could put a bipedal carnivorous bird-lizard on a leash. imagine walking her around the park. i would name mine agatha.
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inkskinned · 16 days ago
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she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.
my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.
my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.
my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.
at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.
my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.
i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.
two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.
it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.
#writeblr#wlw#i often think about like.....#being happy in a gay relationship is sometimes so odd#bc u can forget how stupid ppl are.#bc ur so USED to being gay. and u forget other people GENUINELY ARE homophobic#so it's like. girl pardon?????#but also there are moments where it's like. ohhh the kids are alright#like watching someone razz someone else.... so fucking wholesome#“lemme get this bitche's pronouns before i make gentle fun of them” .... i would have KILLED for that.#THAT is how u know ur accepted#not just tolerated#..... when ppl are like. sure ur nonbinary congrats but WHAT is this fucking sunscreen application#ps idk if "razz'' is a real word but someone asked what it means -#i've always heard it as being a term for 'gentle & friendly teasing'' which like#i personally notice more from my guy friends but is like - when a person isn't#LIKE ACTUALLY teasing u (it's nothing personal/mean) they're just laughing w/you about something#my friends often put on a little voice and call me an anemic little bitch#like 'ooooo the anemic little bitch is cold??? does she need a mouse blanket#bc she's SOOOO SMALL AND ANEMIC???''#and it doesn't hurt my feelings (it makes me laugh very hard) bc 1. i actually called MYSELF that first#and 2. i'm not sensitive about it!!!#a proper razz is when you are ALSO in on the joke - i ALSO think it's funny#for some people i personally find that when they razz u it's when they love u -#they've noticed something genuine about u and love u enough that u know they're not being mean#this is cultural and personality based of course but i'm hispanic#if someone isn't making fun of me it means they hate me . obviously.
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inkskinned · 21 days ago
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i love u thank u :') it is very precious to me & i am so lucky to be a part of ur life in this way
Bodys a bad monster honestly reached into my chest and yanked on my soul and I'll be feeling it for a long long time. I know @inkskinned has probably most definitely heard this a hundred times by now, but gods this book made me ugly sob on the bus and when the old woman next to me asked me if I was alright all I could do was suggest she read the book, because it has carved itself on to my bloody bones. All I can say is thank you for sharing this with us @inkskinned .
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inkskinned · 23 days ago
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oh, no, i have no concept of the size of a whale or of the galaxy. i am cosmically insignificant, which is fine. the other day i accidentally spilled a few grains of sugar on the counter. i watched a single ant heft it over his head and run with it - run! - like he was carrying a crown.
sometimes when i am watching the rain i think about how each particular drop is new and only exists for right-now and yet it is the same water as it has been for millennia. the atoms i am are only meeting in this form for this one life. later maybe they will be a mushroom. maybe in the infinite expanse of time, two of my molecules will meet each other again and they'll say i remember existing with you. which is maybe how a star feels, watching humans dance and laugh and sing in the bodies we are borrowing.
what am i in the cosmic sense? what of the stupid human exploits of my tiny human life?
the other day i found a wilting bumblebee and fed it a little water. after an hour, he made a lazy loop of flight. up and towards the stars.
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inkskinned · 24 days ago
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i hope it's been long enough by now that i can say this. but really truly petrichor is such a good smell and such a good word. today i was out walking my dog and i plum stopped in the middle of the road and horked in a breath like a drowning man. it is sunday and i have no plans and a book i'm reading. everyone on earth is jealous of me
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inkskinned · 25 days ago
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i don't wanna be on my phone but i need my phone to figure out where i'm going on a walk and i need my phone to get to my audiobook and i need my phone to call my brother and i need my phone to get in touch with my friends which is fine but i don't want to be on my phone.
so i walk and that's fine and i'm using the phone in an okay-way in that moment. but sometimes i am using the phone like it is a weapon and that's stupid because no it's not. ive seen a weapon those are different this is a phone. but it's also in my hands until 2 AM and i haven't slept. at 4AM. i don't even mean to do it half the time i'm opening the phone to check the weather or to check my email which are things-that-are-okay but then i am in my phone for hours somehow, and i missed the dawn while i was on instagram. i don't even like instagram.
i don't want to be on my phone im not good at it so i try to put distance there but then i'm distancing myself from my friends. we meet up in person but my pictures are on my phone and the menu is on the phone (mon dieu) and so is venmo. so i need the phone to be with my friends and that's fine because it can record concerts and fun activities and i can take pictures of them smiling with pumpkins.
but i don't want to be on the phone because i go to look at the pictures of the pumpkins and i hate how i look in it but it's fine. and somewhere between the pumpkins and 3AM i have lost so much time. i don't even know what i'm doing on it only that i don't enjoy it any longer. it is this long blank void. forever and ever. restless like how mushrooms feel restless beside a dead body.
i don't want to be on my phone so i pick up the phone and i type into google things to do in my area and i save them to my phone and i'll need my phone to get to the tickets and i'll need my phone to book the appointment and i'll need it, i'll need it
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inkskinned · 26 days ago
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"don't make it political!" .... what proportion of death and suffering must occur before politics are involved. if this isn't political, what is even the point of any politics, ever. of democracy. the words are "by the people for the people." if i am going to be left alone by my elected representatives to "figure it out" - to undergo damage, hardship, fear. what the fuck did i elect them for. what was their job. the entire point is that they handle this shit. this is why we were supposed to be electing leaders.
poverty is political. misogyny is political. gun control is political. climate change is political. how much aid a community gets is political. what the fuck are you talking about. it's been political this whole fucking time.
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inkskinned · 30 days ago
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we were sitting on the floor and i was cutting out tiny pictures to make a collage for a friend's birthday. you were on your phone and you laughed about something, and i was still in love with you then, so i asked what had you giggling.
"sorry. i was just..." you took a moment and went back to texting. "i was telling someone about how you're afraid of the dark."
i'm afraid of the dark because something bad happened. "oh." i felt a little slinky of shame crawl down my throat.
you glanced up, and maybe it showed on my face, because you rolled your eyes and held the phone to the side casually so i could see the group chat. "what? was it a secret?"
i looked down to the scissors in my hand. "i just..." no, it's not a secret. it just felt like something private, something serious. saying why would you tell someone that just feels like an accusation. it's unfair. i honestly am not even ashamed of it, it's just a fact about my person that i don't usually share.
what a strange experience. is this a human thing or a generational thing? for our grandparents: did they need to worry about how quickly someone can just... share your personal information? again, i didn't even really have a true objection. what could i say? i want any person in my life to feel they can be honest with their friends. it's not like i said don't tell anyone this.
i cut out another letter to complete the rainbow happy birthday, started hunting for the exclamation mark. i heard you sigh dramatically.
"don't make a big deal about this," you said.
this entire conversation was a pattern for us, and this was when we got to my least favorite part of the pattern. i would get my feelings hurt in some oblique not-technically-terrible way, and then it would be making a big deal about something. you'd get frustrated for me for being soft, but i was born soft. you knew i was soft when you pierced me. it's one of the things that made controlling me so easy.
"i'm not," i felt my voice crack. the question came without my wanting. "why are you guys talking about me?" and why are you saying that thing? why not like - i'm telling them how you're generous and kind and pretty.
you let out this low, tragic groan. "oh my god." you tossed the phone away from your body. "there, see? i just won't talk to them if you don't like it."
the rest of the hour went the way it always went, between us: i said i don't actually mind if you talk to your friends but -, you found a way to call my minor expression of discomfort "being dramatic." you got upset that i had been offended. i ended up apologizing, even though i hadn't actually done anything.
afterwards, you picked up the phone again. after texting for a little bit, you snorted. "okay," you said, "but it is kind of funny you're afraid of the dark. i mean, when you think about it."
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inkskinned · 1 month ago
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the tradwife movement is the same as it has always been - back in the kitchen, back to breeding - it just has better branding.
when i was younger, i hated pink. i was not like other girls. this is now something i'm embarrassed of - this was not me being a "girl's girl."
but it was expressing something many of us felt at the time: i literally wasn't what girlhood was supposed to be. this is a hard thing to explain, but you know when you're not performing girlhood correctly. it isn't as easy as "i liked x when girls liked y" - because there were other girls that liked x, too - but i never figured out exactly the correct way to like x, or to be interested in y.
now there is the divine feminine. this is the same rhetoric it has always been: women are biologically driven to like pink and ribbons and submitting to our husbands.
the problem is that the patriarchy found a better PR team. because yes, actually, i want every woman to have the choice to be a homemaker. i also want her taken seriously for her legitimate home-making labor. i want her to be recognized as also having a job, just unpaid. i want men to have this opportunity, too.
but it is no longer "i made this choice and I love it." instead it is a sixteen-paragraph rant about how selfish it is that my generation isn't having kids. instead it's long videos about how if you feed your children processed foods, you're going to kill them. instead it is "this is what womanhood is supposed to be. i feel bad for any other choices you're making."
the shame spiral is just prettier. it is large houses devoid of personality. it is the implication: if you don't have this, you aren't happy. the solid, everlasting assurance: women are actually supposed to be submitting. this is the default. this is the natural state of things. all other attempts inflict suffering.
but you can no longer say i'm not like other girls. you can no longer reject this image completely. you cannot find it revolting, even if you know that the underbelly is toxic and festering. sure, it is the same repackaged patriarchy. but the internet does not have shades of grey. you should support and reward other women! your disgust is actually internalized misogyny. not because you are seeing a vision of yourself the way they're trying to train you to be. not because you feel her ghost pass within an inch of your earlobe. not because your father will eventually ask you - why can't you be like her?
because they figured out how to make it beautiful: women will sell other women on this idea, and we will find the singular loophole in feminism. sure, she's shaming you in most of her videos. sure, she implies that a different life is obscene. but she just wants you to be happy! you'd be happier if you were listening!
and the whole time you're sitting there thinking: i'd actually just be happier if i had that kind of money.
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inkskinned · 1 month ago
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what day of the week do you think was the first one. like when we started counting was it a sunday. like yes time is arbitrary but also do you think at any point someone got confused and was like "it's tuesday today" (it was wednesday) but nobody corrected that so we just ran with it. help. too much is made up and when i think too hard about it i start feeling like. i had to explain to a toddler the other day we can't "skip" to thursday and to be honest i had no real logical answer for why we can't just let thursday come before wednesday. they're just like that. they don't even go from small to large. technically a week could start on a tuesday. help
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inkskinned · 1 month ago
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People like you piss me off. First of all it's WOMEN. WOMEN WOMEN WOMAN. YOu can say the word it doesn't stop it from being real. Do you have a uterus? You are a WOMAND and you always will be.
anyway here's my paypal link if anyone wants to help a womand cover grocery costs
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inkskinned · 1 month ago
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see also Foucault's panopticon: how to watch without ever being seen. before he discusses this theory, he relates an idea called "correct training" - training that works on large-scale populations. it is easier to control the behavior of the masses, he posits, when the masses themselves are trained into control.
in his words (pg 170 in the linked text), there is such a thing as discipline "that coerces by means of observation." in other words: behavior can be controlled/forced just by being watched.
when i was a kid, my backpack strap broke on the train and spilled everywhere. it was sleeting outside and everything immediately got wet. so many strangers helped me chase coins and pens and notebooks. it was heartwarming and kind and they comforted me in the wintery new england way - gentle jovial ah it happens kid, no worries, you okay? get home safe before lapsing back into silence.
recently i helped a teen in the airport when the zipper on her suitcase burst open. teary-eyed and panicking, she thanked us profusely while i and a young mother stooped for her belongings. she kept apologizing like she'd done something tragically embarrassing. her head jerked up and around strangely. she giggled kind of nervously. "sorry," she said, "at first i thought you were recording."
i hate the "meta glasses" with their invisible cameras i hate when people record strangers just-living-their-lives i hate the culture of "it's not illegal so it's fine". people deserve to walk around the city without some nameless freak recording their faces and putting them up on the internet. like dude you don't show your own face how's that for irony huh.
i hate those "testing strangers to see if they're friendly and kind! kindness wins! kindness pays!" clickbait recordings where overwhelmingly it is young, attractive people (largely women) who are being scouted for views and free advertising . they're making you model for them and they reap the benefits. they profit now off of testing you while you fucking exist. i do not want to be fucking tested. i hate the commodification of "kindness" like dude just give random people the money, not because they fucking smiled for it. none of the people recording has any idea about the origin of the term "emotional labor" and none of us could get them to even think about it. i did not apply for this job! and you know what! i actually super am a nice person! i still don't want to be fucking recorded!
& it's so normalized that the comments are always so fucking ignorant like wow the brunette is so evil so mean so twisted just because she didn't smile at a random guy in an intersection. god forbid any person is in hiding due to an abusive situation. no, we need to see if they'll say good morning to a stranger approaching them. i am trying to walk towards my job i am not "unkind" just because i didn't notice your fucked up "social experiment". you fucking weirdo. stop doing this.
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inkskinned · 1 month ago
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i was raised by a catholic deacon so as a kid - maybe ages 7 to 14 - i would have told you that abortion was only okay in exception cases like rape. i didn't even really understand any of the terms at play here, only how to parrot that there were "few and far between" exceptions, but abortion-as-a-whole was irresponsible and evil. i believed it was a bad form of birth control.
for context's sake - i still had a flip phone. google wasn't really a thing back then. the whole narrative was akin to the apostle's creed: i don't know that i ever thought about what the words meant, only that this was what i was supposed to say when asked. i remember being in 4th grade and having it down pat - abortion is evil, except in cases such as rape. my father wasn't insensitive, after all - he acknowledged there might be medical necessity to end a life.
what changed was that at 14 i learned how hard it is to prove that a rape has happened.
it was a boy, actually. and his piano teacher. and him telling me, crying, that nobody believed him that he didn't want it. and what if she gets pregnant?
this is the mark in a lot of our lives: at some point, someone will confide in you, and then you see exactly how often it happens. how it happens so fucking loudly, and nobody says anything. how often your friends, nervous, will shakily admit that while they love their partner, there are a few times that they didn't really consent, that they didn't really want it. for others, there are nights half-remembered in bars. for others, they married their partner at 15, so now it's "fine", legally. for others, there are yes moments that felt like a no. there were no moments that were never acknowledged. you say no but are told you actually said yes because of what you were wearing or because he is good at swimming and his life would be ruined or because he's a nice guy or -
in the last 8 years, my father has become radicalized. he now believes in "no exceptions".
but the truth is that there was never going to be a true "exception" clause. there was never going to be a grey area. i am not even really sure they believe in the concept of rape. and if they did - how would you ever prove it? in the six weeks you have to state your case - when it takes years in a court of law - the "rape exception" would simply evaporate under the continued pregnancy. you were never going to have a moment where you could privately tell a doctor - it's because of a rape. there was no box you could check. there was no form you could file. it was always going to be assumed consensual until proven malignant. it was always going to be your fault.
they also knew they couldn't actually sell the rest of us on this idea of it's always blessed. they knew in their hearts that every pregnancy should be wanted. they knew going in that plenty of us - even raised catholic, even having had this shoved down our throats - plenty of us still had too many questions about what ifs.
it's just they just didn't want to come off as monsters. they patted our heads and taught us they weren't insensitive. they just had these beliefs. and then they put their hands on our bodies. and said if you don't listen, i'm going to force them.
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inkskinned · 1 month ago
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your work matters, and you're not a very good judge of it.
you can have the fancy degrees and the years of experience. you can have zero idea what you're doing and nothing but a song in your heart. the way you view what you write will never be how i view what you write. which is why you gotta write whatever feels real and good and honest to ya.
i forgot this. it's really lonely to be an author. the world you slice through to carve into a page - it can't ever be fully realized. sometimes the sun is butter yellow, and i can never spread it onto toast to serve to you. i can never describe fully the feeling of a new england october, only that a place that is often too-cold is suddenly full of a strange and visceral warmth. if you're not a writer or an artist, the experience is like this: take a flower and study it. without eating it, cook me a meal that tastes like this flower.
so i didn't know how good the book is, only that i hoped beyond a hope that anyone out there might get a kick out of it. maybe someone nice will review it every few days, i thought. i just want it to help any 1 person.
i did a reading recently where far too many people were kind and thoughtful and so gentle with me that i got into my car and burst into tears. i've had a very rough year, and this experience felt like a hug. so many people telling me they love what i read from the book. and in it, listening to the laughter as i read - at jokes i have long since stopped thinking are funny - it sent a bird straight through my heart. oh shit, i thought. i've been so unnecessarily cruel to myself.
you have no idea how many people read your work and don't respond because they are too shy or busy or unsure. i have webcomics i've never commented on that i've been checking on weekly for actual years. there are artists on spotify i will never be able to see in concert. there are paintings in galleries that i couldn't afford but wanted to kiss. i love what you have made, and i have no idea how to tell you. i love you, and it hurt me and helped me and also sent me back home. i wish there was more time and more ways to shine the light back to you.
be gentle. you have no way of knowing if you're good enough, so you might as well make something that feels good to make. someone will love it. and that love is never wasted.
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