lizardtales

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Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

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Anne Carson, Wrong Norma

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Megan Alpert, from "Unsignified"

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Yrsa Daley-Ward, from bone; “waiting for the check to clear”

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the undone cowboy writes to his sweetheart by silas denver melvin (click for better quality)

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Thinking about Natalie “Something Catholic” Scatorccio’s religious upbringing coming out when she’s in a state of fear and desperation, reverting back to the only comfort she had as a child by pleading with a God she stopped believing in years ago.

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something about van having recognizable facial scarring as a visibly queer person in the 90s. something about van palmer never being able to hide the fact that she was queer and coming home with difference carved into her skin. something about tai being visibly unaffected by the wilderness but so fractured internally because she has to separate who she is from who she wants the world to perceive her as because of respectability politics. something about taivan probably being the only people in each others lives to see them for who they really are and that's part of why they kept falling apart and together and apart again. idk tho.

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Maybe the world was a rotten place full of self-serving assholes. Maybe I’d had bad luck with people. Maybe I was the problem; maybe I wasn’t. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t willing to condemn them all to a cruel fate, because, I knew then, it just wasn’t who I was. I wasn’t hateful. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t my father’s daughter. I was tired of being bitter, tired of my cynicism. It had never saved me from heartache, never insulated me from hurt. It had only made me miserable. Maybe I wanted to be the kind of person who, in spite of everything, still chose to have a little fucking faith. To have some hope. Not to give up.

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man of the house (eldest daughter)

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Kaveh Akbar, from "Pilgrim Bell", Pilgrim Bell

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samira mohan the best patient advocate in that emergency department hands down. the way she takes care of joyce st. clair never ever fails to give me goosebumps. when she steps back and screams at everybody to stop and the whole department stands still and then she immediately gets down to business, confirming that joyce has sickle cell and ordering the appropriate treatment. and when whitaker seems doubtful of the validity of joyce’s condition samira educates him concisely and directly without being unkind, but still with the full intensity and seriousness that that conversation deserves. and while still being respectful towards addicts!!! and then there’s the case with the influencer suffering from mercury poisoning that samira refuses to ship off to psych because her patient is telling her something is off and she trusts her patient. and the fact that she’s actively researching racial disparity in the ER by painstakingly reviewing patient charts from the last 5 years!!!!! THAT’S dedication and passion!!!! people call her slow-mo and she’s made her peace with that bc she knows it’s for the right reasons, bc she refuses to cut corners or overlook things or ignore her gut. bc she cares deeply for every single one of her patients, no matter how they treat her (see: the morphine addicted dad visiting from new york for his daughter’s wedding). like she really is that girl!!!!! she really is!!!! samira mohan i LOVE YOU and you’re the BEST RESIDENT DOCTOR EVER and i would TRUST YOU with MY LIFE

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like sorry but your name is samira mohan and your father died when you were thirteen because of (racialized) mistreatment in the ER. and so every day you come to work as an ER doctor and you refuse to be anything but thorough and you value data driven approaches and you build trust with your patients until you have the highest patient satisfaction rate in the department. because the last thing you want is a patient being hurt because you were rushing or not listening or not considering all the options. because that's the type of doctor!! that let your dad die!! and then everyone you work with either berates you daily or calls you slo-mo

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Joy Sullivan, from “Balloon”, Instructions for Traveling West

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The implication that Taissa was only ever able to move on and love someone else because she forgot. Forgot who they were in the wilderness. Forgot who Van was to her. Forgot, because she had to, because she needed to erase the Tai of that place and in so doing had to erase the Van of it, too, because they’re intrinsically linked. One and the same. Two halves of a single whole. Van never moved on; she shrouded herself in shades of memory of the rest of her life. Taissa only moved on because she made herself forget it all. And now: she’s done. Now: I could not protect her, but I can remember. I can carry her forward. The love of my life, regrets and all. Bloodstains that never wash out for anything. Nostalgia, for better or worse. Whose memories are these? Mine now, mine always.

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Also please let’s discuss the Other Tai of it all, because this is important to me. She isn’t evil. It’s incredibly important to understand she isn’t evil. She’s hungry. She’s hungry for all the things that kept Taissa alive in the woods. She IS the thing that kept Taissa alive in the woods, in her own way. She was the very essence of nature. She was dirt and trees and need. What kept Tai alive out there? Food. Meat. Van. What does Other Tai naturally gravitate toward, trying to steer Taissa toward the things she needs? Food. Meat. Van. That political career? Theater. That family polished to a shine? Facade. What really matters, when everything else is shorn away? Food. Meat. Van. Base impulse. First loves and full bellies. She isn’t evil. She’s trying to keep Tai fed and alive, as she always has. It just comes at such a terrible cost.

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— Donte Collins

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Jennifer Chang, from "The World", Some Say the Lark