climbing poetrees

You know when you do something that you know is wrong? But you do it anyway? And then the person you hurt assumes you didn’t mean to hurt them and forgives you and you feel your soul shrivel a little because you’re pretty sure you’re a bad person hiding in the body of a 22-year-old?

dietcoker:

1. An Oddly Modern Antiquarian Bookshop in Toronto specializes in the strangest, most wonderful books.
2. Katherine Arcement writes about her adolescent love of fan fiction.
3. Monica Torres writes about majoring in English while not being white.
4. Dating While Feminist and Christian

(I’ve been waiting for the bus for an hour. Baltimore, you are hard to love.)

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dietcoker:

• My Last All-Nighter - Kate Miller on Adderall addiction
• Amazing NYT profile of Anne Carson
• Seeing the Subway slideshow
• On Faith and Gender, or Why I Dress Like a Man on Fridays

Up at 6 with a nightmare about dystopian futures. Someday I won’t dream.

Today one of my ex-not-boyfriends got married to the daughter of his cult leader (don’t ask). Sometimes I feel selfish and self-pitying. Sometimes I have cramps and watch a whole season of Supernatural. I see my boyfriend tomorrow, and I think I have a weird bridesmaid dress for Kirby’s wedding. I have the world’s worst canker sore - I get them about once or twice a month - and this one is on the side of my mouth and prevents me from talking or eating or breathing normally. “I’m not going to be able to kiss you as enthusiastically as I’d like,” I texted Nick.” “i still love you. It’s okay,” he said. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. I want a dog. I feel like I say the same thing in every text post: independence, dog, tattoos, apartment, no debt, boyfriend, best friend(s). On a loop. I dream I have a ponytail, sometimes.

Sometimes your ex-not-boyfriend gets married. Once, he told you you both weren’t on the same “spiritual track” and that you couldn’t exchange letters over the summer. He sent you a final text message in June and you didn’t see him until January. Not a word between then. He seemed surprised that you still existed. It didn’t matter that you’d fallen into a depression since then and started dating someone else, with whom you broke up, and then you’d taken up with another not-boyfriend who moved to Italy and none of it mattered, because he couldn’t manifest anymore care for you than what you saw in his eyes. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t see how he’d been manipulated. He was gentle and vulnerable and logical to a fault. He wanted answers and you couldn’t give them, so he left you for something who could. You’re over it.

Today I just want to not be around people. 

A family with two tinies just stopped by the church, looking for transportation or money for transportation to the district court downtown tomorrow for an appointment. We can’t give money, so I called a friend who works at a local community center, but they don’t have anyone available to give rides on Wednesday mornings (food pantry day, etc.). So we had to send them away. I took the mother’s number in case I find anything, but there aren’t many free transit assistance systems in Baltimore, it seems. There are some shelters and food assistance programs, but nothing directly transit-oriented. It blew to send them away - they were very gracious the whole time and thanked us for checking with other folks. 

I understand not giving literal money away, and relying on food/clothing donations, etc. - but they needed seven dollars. Seven. If I had it, I think I would’ve given it to them, I think. Even if they ended up using it for other stuff, or whatever. Who cares. Seven dollars.

dietcoker:

• Fiction Pick: “Puppy” by George Saunders
• Can SNL alum Victoria Jackson return from the political fringe?
• Self-Care in Graduate School: Health vs. the MFA
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, ever thought-provoking in The Good, Racist People