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I feel like pirating media that isn’t sold or offered anywhere legally anymore shouldn’t be called piracy. Girl thats archaeology

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Dad -

There is a last time for everything. That is what I just read.

I wish that wasn't true.

I wish I was four again, in a Cinderella dress, being carried on your shoulders at night. I wish I was a toddler again, listening to you explain how you had to go out of town to work for a few weeks.

I wish I was running around telling all my friends you were coming home from working in Oklahoma. Wish I was six and helping you paint the walls, watching you pour concrete in the backyard. I wish I was a baby, being lulled to sleep with an old song. I wish I was in the kitchen, helping mash ground beef as you stirred sauce for spaghetti, wish I was in first grade, getting one of my first cup of coffee, or in eighth on the way to school, when you made me a cup every morning before I skated. I wish I was fifteen, in the car with you as you drove me to choir practice, crying because you would never drive me to practice again. I wish I was 12 going to my first concert with you, or 18 when you took me to an 18+ venue for the first time. I wish I was five and listening to PJ Harvey with you for the first time. I wish I was 19, on the road with you, when I put her song on again.

Dad, I read once that it's possible that time is circular, that everything that is happening now is happening at the same time as the future and the past. That everything is over and happening.

If that's true, then somewhere in that vast circle of time, there is a little girl on your shoulders, falling asleep. There is a kid in a giant t-shirt, leaving an orange splotch on a fixture while trying to help you paint the walls. There is a teenager you are teaching to drive, and a child refusing to drive a go cart. There are a million mes, and there are a million yous. And there will never be any last times.

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A Letter to a Man I Never Knew

Your birthday passed just over two weeks ago.

I remembered. It was groundhog day - not hard to forget. I wonder if, in your days of life, you ever cracked a joke about that.

I imagined you, an ever-dwindling memory, from before you were sick. A figure, an amalgam of features from photographs and my own hazy memory - a head of white hair, the nose we share, tanned skin, soft smile. You stood in doorways or reclined on the sofa, or faked anger as I "stole" your chair.

I remember, even now, when I was playing in my room at your house, back turned. The light went out. I cried. You laughed. I called out for my grandmother, and you were reprimanded. You smiled at me, a mischief beyond age in your eye.

I made you try so many of my cooking concoctions - horrible mixtures of too much spice and childhood whimsy. Even when you stopped finishing your food, you still ate them for me. I was always so proud, thinking I had made some grand dish. Every time I baked cupcakes or pie, after I had grown out of the spice cabinet, you still ate what you could.

You tried to teach me piano - your great love. I tried. For you, I really did. I got halfway through "Moonlight Sonata" before I threw in the towel. I know you were always disappointed I didn't finish, just as I knew you were proud I still carried your music in my way. I remember your joy watching my sister perform what I couldn't - song after song on your piano.

I remember as you aged, how my grandmother would scold you for feeding the dog under the table. You would say "okay, okay," then silently drop another piece of bacon. Once, as you ate less and less, we all were astonished at your clean plate. Then the dog licked her sated lips in the corner, and we all laughed.

And then, there are memories I don't truly possess of you. Hand-me-downs from relatives, things I ought to know. You played the organ at my godmother's wedding - one of those that still exist from long ago, with massive pipes reaching up, up, up. You played the accordion, an instrument which dwarfed you in your final days, up until the end, clacking through polka after polka while my grandmother danced.

I don't remember much for a long time. It is one of my greatest regrets - your absence from my memory when you were still here. For a while, you were a stationary piece in your own home, rocking away on a chair while watching history documentaries.

But I remember your final day. I remember how I knew it was there - how I am certain you did, too. How after so many years of stationary, when a puppy jumped into your laugh, I saw that same smile.

That is the last time I remember you.

I didn't see you when my grandmother emerged wailing from the room where you lay, nor when my father told me through tears what had happened. I didn't see you as we all waited in the chill of the October night for the firemen to take you away. I never saw a stretcher.

The next time I saw you was in your urn. You insisted on being cremated - you didn't want us to remember you for your final days.

I spoke at your funeral. I remember how empty the church was - Covid, you understand. I remember hearing stories of a man I never really got to know, but now wish I had. And it made me angry - at myself, mostly - for never asking you who you were when I had the chance.

So now, you are a ghost in my periphery. I see you in every piano, in my nose, in your recliner, in the back room, in a begging dog. I hear you in every polka, every trill of my grandmother's voice, in every organ. You are everywhere now. A man I never knew.

[eye-stealer]

work song by hozier / mahmoud darwish

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“i'm falling back in love with myself.

slowly,

but i am falling nonetheless.”

Isabella Dorta, the letters i will never send

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she loved me, yes, that I'm still loving her.

1. Mahmoud Darwish // 2. The Separation, Edvard Munch // 3. Holding On To Heartache, Louis Tomlinson // 4.+5. The Banshees Of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh // 6. The Voice I Owe to You (#63), Pedro Salinas // 7. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry // 8. Poem for a Blue Page, Natasha Rao // 9. Feeling Your Absence, Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy // 10. White Ferrari, Frank Ocean // 11.+12. Silueta Series, Ana Mendieta // 13. There Is No Absolution For The Fallen, Only Dying, P.D.

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Get up.

My mind is awake. It is the middle of the night, and all I hear is my own breathing, timed to the rhythm of the whirring fan, the cicadas croaking.

The night is warm, and my thighs stick together underneath my thin sheets. My entire face is warm, buried into the pillow that is never cold.

I can’t fall asleep. I don’t know when I slept last. My mind begs for the sweet release of nothingness but won’t shut up. I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this.

And then it’s suddenly morning. The fan is still sitting above me, but the cicadas are all gone. Dead now. They have been replaced by birds and cars and the sounds of life.

I turn over in my bed, but light finds me whichever way I go. I’m not tired but I don’t want to be awake and it’s hot and my legs are stuck together again and I can feel beads of sweat on my neck and my cheeks are hot and I hate this I hate this I hate-

Fuck.

It’s mid afternoon, yet the sun is still scorching, taunting me. I am outside and my thighs are stuck together. My head hurts. Did I have something to do today? When did I last leave my house? Why am I outside? God, it’s so hot.

I sit in the shower. I’ve been standing for too long, I need to sit. Wait, how long has it been? The water washes over me, and yet my thighs still stick together and my head is still pounding.

I feel along my arm. A bump. An enemy. I grab the washcloth and scrub and scrub and scrub and

It’s still there.

That fucking bump.

And another.

I scrub until I burn, and yet I am still sticky and uncomfortably warm.

I hate this I hate this I hate this

I lay in bed. It is noon. I don’t care. I am just breathing. My lungs can never get enough air. I am so tired. My head hurts.

Why is the sun so bright?

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Listen I know there's the joke that writers go to coffee shops to hang out and "write" but if I have free time to write in the middle of the dang afternoon and I am AT HOME I will NOT WRITE. I just won't. I'll play with my cats. I'll hang out in front of my fridge. Mostly, I will do housework! I will be beaten into adulthood respnsibilties submission by my overflowing hamper and the furballs gathering in the corners of my stairs and the dried up toothpaste in my sink. I need that ~third space~ to be able to zone out and focus. Yes, libraries are very good for this too… but I like caffeine too much.

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Tales of a Lighthouse

When days always seemed too short and the horrors of night stretched through my restlessness, when the waves were tall and the shores filled with curious creatures unknown to me, my father and I lived at the base of a lighthouse. It was a time when the ships still needed the glowing beacon to keep them from crashing into the rocky shore. Every night, my father manned the lighthouse, hundreds of feet above the crashing sea. And every night, I tossed and turned in my bed, terrified of the creatures and terrors that had the capability to sink an entire ship. 

My grandmother lived inland in a little blue house on a skinny concrete road. I loved her house because it was perched upon concrete legs. My dad told me the legs were for hurricanes and would prevent the house from flooding. Whenever I imagined a hurricane coming, I always thought her house would jump so high on its thick legs that the water would be gone when the house returned to Earth. 

We visited my Baba every Sunday. She would always make Pedaheh and a salad for our lunch, and we would bring a roast that had cooked overnight. My dad told me that Baba was very religious. He said that was why she had statues of angels on her bookshelves. At the time, I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen, the flair of their wings, hair which flowed behind them like gentle waves. Sometimes, when I was left alone, I would stare at the figures and pretend to be a beautiful angel, folding my hands to my heart and tilting my head to the side as they always seemed to do.

Sometimes when Dad had to work extra at the lighthouse for one reason or another, Baba would come to our house to watch me. On those nights, she helped me make box cake. When we had baked and frosted the cake, she would sit me at the table and cut me a slice and tell me one of her many stories. Many of her stories revolved around her Baba, and the many memories her Baba had given her. The stories were like a vast spoken history of all the soft memories, the dolls received as a little girl, the chiding nicknames, the money sent home.

Baba had, of course, never been to the Old Country, and I think she always knew, as she spoke, that she would never make the journey. Yet as a child she had spoken Ukrainian to her Baba, and she would help write letters to her long lost family she would never see in a land she had never visited. I think she wanted me to hold all of those stories she contained within my own heart and mind, ready to pass down when the time came.

When it was time for me to rest, Baba would tuck me into bed and say, “listen to those waves”. I had listened to those waves every night  since arriving at the lighthouse, and I found them quite terrifying. One night I told Baba that.

“Baba, what if I do not want to listen to the waves?”

“And why would you ignore them?” Baba asked. “The crashing waves sound like they are singing a lullaby to you.”

“But why would the sea sing to me and crash all those ships?” I asked, desperate and fearful for some of her grandmotherly wisdom.

“Maybe the ocean does not like ships.”

That was an odd thought. If I were the ocean, would I like ships? Maybe some of them, but not the ships that coughed up black smoke and took lots of fish. I would certainly like company if I were the ocean, but not those people who left cans on the shore. Maybe the ocean enjoyed my company, when I would sit upon the shore and sing songs from school. I bet the ocean liked Dad. He kept boats from mucking up the shore. The ocean also would like Baba, I thought to myself, because her house could jump from hurricanes and her ears could hear the ocean’s lullaby.

Baba stood and left my room. I got up and looked out my window to the waves that stretched beyond. With the tide having come in during the afternoon, the waves stretched far up into the shore. And in their endless cycle of crash and retreat, crash and retreat, they created a melody. It sounded like what I had learned in music class a few days before, like crescendos and decrescendos. The crashing became cymbals, the retreat was the low, rapid pattering on a drum. 

A song emerged with the wind whistling through a flute. I began to sing, yet to this day I cannot remember the words. In that moment, the song was perfect, with the cymbals and the drums and the flute and a dozen other instruments I could not name. I fell back upon my bed and listened to the instruments continue their concert. And I fell asleep.

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A Ghost

I saw your ghost today. 

You were in the fifth pew back, and I only noticed you at the end, when your name was spoken. Your rare name, so often mispronounced, but the reverend said it right today.

My stomach dropped while I sat surrounded, constantly observed, in the choir loft. I wanted to scream, “I see you!” from my perched seat, wanted you to remember me too, but I couldn’t. I just sat, and watched you leave, my mind screaming to say something to make you stay yet my throat choked with memories too long gone to swallow.

But today isn’t the first time you have haunted me. You haunt me always, welling up in me when I pass your neighborhood, when I hear your song.

I remember when we were friends, so many years ago. You had little purple glasses that made your face look stern, oh so serious for second grade. And oh, you were serious. Much more so than me. You loved Mulan because you, too, felt like you could never be yourself. And I thought that was so cheesy, but I let you play “Reflection” on repeat anyway.

You let me stay the night a few times, in that tall, skinny house I can still picture so clearly. You got angry when I beat you at Uno that 1 time - the only time I ever won against you. I so rarely saw you smile.

But I saw you smile today. I suppose you’re happy now, now that I will never see you again, now that a decade has passed since I have called you my friend. You smiled and put your hands into a heart when your name was spoken. It’s the happiest I have ever seen you, and that fact made me grieve someone I will never get to know.

And now I say goodbye forever.