i cannot write poetry or narrative any more because the inclination to turn the end poignant or pretty is too strong, and always false. it's too tempting to end on an upswing, a hopeful note, a call to action, or a comforting scene, but in fact none of those endings have ever happened in my life, so i don't know why i would pretend that they have. 

i hear toni morrison in my head saying that the point is to live beautifully in completely impossible circumstances and i feel cheap and low and empty and useless saying, i cannot do that. i am not capable of that. i am only capable at this point of screaming the rest of the way down to hell, the fire has been at my feet too long, the flames are up to my neck. 

it's possible i have never healed from anything. it's possible i have never gotten over anything.

these are the memories that circulate the most in my head right now:

brandy L and i running to brandy S's grandmas house to call the cops after we got flashed in sixth grade

texting claire that reconnecting is not in my best interest

all the times i didn't yell at jackie, or olivia, or katy, all the ways i didn't explode in horrible workplaces doing immoral work for unethical people, all the times i wish i had yelled, all the times i should have exploded

breaking up with david for not coming to see me when i was sick, which wasn't really about that 

in high school telling my mother i have depression and her saying no you don't 

sentences i wish i could say to my mother: have you ever considered that maybe you are just a bad person 

sentences i wish i could say to my father: you're a fucking dumbass (and when he interrupts me) how can you argue that you want to talk with me if you refuse to listen when i speak. a piece of me wishes to be talking with my mother, let him interrupt us, and then scream

the time i ran over a tree in maryland on fourth of july when i was a little drunk and the guy walked past and said nope not my problem

when sean and i lived in the shit apartment above a garage and took the grocery carts out away from the garage and the guy knocked on the door 

not being understood by kabir, his little preaching about how malcolm died because he was too much for the people 

every fight i have ever had with jared and how the past several have wound up with me just shrieking that he has to be more careful with me and how he never is and probably i don't think we will ever be together and if i actually think i want to be in a relationship (which i probably don't) then i would have to actually go find someone to date (which i don't want to do) (so then why would i push him farther away if i'm not going to do those things) 

the impending doom of my financial situation

i don't like people

i don't like interacting with people

i don't like fake smiling at people

i don't like small talk

i don't like traffic or how anyone else drives

i don't like how neighbors behave anywhere

i don't like how no one has social graces anymore

i don't like how the kids haven't learned how to talk

i don't like overhearing other peoples' conversations

i don't like witnessing gossip

i don't like listening to small spats

i don't like supporting people with the same problem over and over and over

i don't like people who never ask questions

i don't like uninformed viewpoints

i don't like when opinions are taken as facts

i don't like how podcast voices are somehow trusted experts now

i don't like AI or chatbots 

i don't like how many people use AI or chatbots

i don't like other people's unprocessed emotions

i don't like maintaining my temper in the face of someone else's loss of control

i don't like being ignored when i have attempted to contribute

i don't like personalities that have to talk constantly

i don't like external processors

i don't like providing support and i don't like needing support

i don't like passive aggressive behavior or commentary

i don't like being parented or seeing other adults need parenting

not even i want to hold all of the pain that has been placed in me, much less the work of healing. why would i expect anyone else to do it? 

i know my rage is toxic. it is bright green radioactive sludge, like the simpsons depiction of nuclear waste, like the simpsons writers' pedophilia on full display at epstein island, like christian white supremacism in the duggar family, like the bile you throw up drunk before your stomach empties. 

interesting that throwing up on an empty stomach, throwing up pure fresh bile and stomach lining, is white. is white. is white. is white. white and frothy and soft. white like snow, white like snot, white like pure cocaine. 

i will never get a moment where my mother looks me in my face and offers any kind of explanation, or healing, or love. i will never get a moment where my mother offers actual love. i will never get my mother's love. 

and claire, texting me on my birthday, with no idea that i had unblocked her drunkenly a few weeks before eager to start a fight, eager to ask her if she still loves her MAGA FEMA NRA white supremacist north florida husband. and the truest thing i could have said: that doesn't seem like that's in my best interest. my best interest. mine. my interest, my best sense of self and purpose and future. no room for any of that in my family. 

i wonder if they text me, i wonder if they think of me. i wonder if they wish they could call. i wonder if they know my absence is commentary. i wonder if they read my iron spine as trauma or as truth. none of this matters, it would only feed my fury to know more than i know now. 

i cannot go to therapy any more and not be seen. i cannot be in a friendship any more with someone who does not see me. i cannot exist translucent, white noise, partial, a half-thought, any more. for anyone. 

i am confident about the fact that my mother is a narcissist.

i am confident about the fact that my mother's narcissism was taught to her by her mother, and her mother taught by her mother. 

i am confident that abuse does not exist without willingness to turn a blind eye. i am confident that both my parents fucked up. 

i am confident that i experienced medical neglect in a two parent household where only one parent was a christian scientist. 

i am confident that i am bigger, stronger, more capable, more powerful, more visible, with better capacity to see and hear and witness and love those around me than anyone in my childhood had the capacity to teach me to be. i am confident in what i have taught myself, and in what i have sought out from others. 

i am less confident now that i am veering into antisocial behavior. witnessing is a skill, one i learned and polished; i am now using it to witness my own suicidality and homicidality. i see me. i cannot turn a blind eye. 

i see a soul stretched to ruin, fabric worn into the lack of a pattern, skin burned into a wound. i see bones riddled with cancer, blood thick with rage. i see fat deposits of hatred, disgust, fear; some of it inherited, but all of it living in me. 

i see a life run red with other people's bloodletting from my veins. i see a riverbed run dry with my inability to process anything for anyone else, ever again. 

i am not bitter; they always depict women as bitter. scorned women, abandoned women, traumatized women. bitter bitter bitter. acidity is no protection. 

fire is the only thing that is both protection and self consumption. there is nothing in my two hands that will not light. i am my own kindling. i am my own twin flame. 

who could tell me not to set myself ablaze? who could argue that there is not a long, loud history of others charting the same path? who could tell me that the man in tiananmen square and thai monks and aaron bushnell did not share the same path? who could tell me not to strike a match made of my body on the char of my soul down the box of my body to set loose the consumptive shriek of my heart? 

so few get caught in my crossfire. i am so careful, but never careful enough. 

so then, would it not be better for everyone if i did burn down? would not a hollowed out carcass of pinus contorta make more sense on this hillside, for eyes and ears of others? they will not miss my toxicity, they will not miss my rage. who would mourn a wreck finally cleared off the berm? 

literally everyone causes me pain. unsolicited advice that is uninformed. kneejerk emotional reactions. superficial desires in place of deep morality or vision. 

i would rather be alone 

don't fucking tell me not to do ANTHING i want to do. i am going to do it! don't tell me not to pick a battle or project. i am going to do it. i am going to do anything i want to do. and i am not going to pick up YOUR hurt feelings about MY autonomy, vision, desire, or ability. 

i am not going to be the friend you want me to be. i am not going to be your daily person to text. i am not going to support stupid ideas, bad relationships, or harmful reactions. i think you should divorce your husband. i think you should put your kid in public school. i think you should be in therapy. i think you should shut the fuck up. 

people i hate

all maga people, all republicans, all self professed conservatives

all AI execs, most high tech people, most weapons manufacturing people

all law enforcement, up thru the federal acronyms, down thru the social workers

everyone who has ever abandoned me

mary baker eddy and every christian science practitioner

my sister, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother 

all of my exes

ray, deb, kim, that blonde bitch, everyone who has ever supported ray financially

everyone in ckap

caitlin, libby, katie, michele, every female who waltzed away 

brian bouchard, kristen pepera, the short doctor who called me fat, most clinical people

the entire c suite at lifeworks plus a couple more directors 

half of cleveland city council, scott osiecki, carole ballard, brian kazy, mike polensek, blaine griffin

everyone who makes business decisions for every health insurance company

everyone sitting on a board of a multinational corporation

 because even being a part of the "dei work ecosystem" requires compromise on values i am not willing to compromise on. requires compromise on working with people like mallory mcmaster.

empowered rachel kacenjar to work with karen hewitt to create new jobs with employers who care. what chance do i possibly have. 

i wish i could write a letter to all the employers of my 20s.

how lucky you were, to get me, before i became conscious. 

how lucky you were to receive that level of labor and energy and focus and drive, before i understood that i would have to prevent you from abusing me. 

i have had ten million jobs and almost all of them have been bad. overall bad. bad for my body, bad for my mind, bad for my resume, bad for my self esteem, bad for my energy, bad for my trajectory. bad. 

how do you be a community person if you hate people??????? 
ALL PEOPLE ARE WORTH SAVING over there... away from me...

there is too much damage. i do not trust. I DO NOT TRUST. 

and i have learned through life experience that it is not limited to cleveland, this instinct did not shift when i was in portland.

how do you be a person who learned deeply that the family cannot be trusted
the friends cannot be trusted
the partners cannot be trusted 
the community cannot be trusted

none of them survive the litmus test of a) saying they care b) behaving like they care c) even when it's hard. 

the family cannot be trusted. 

how much of this is because i am white? how much because i come from a white family and a white community and have therefore had majority white friends? how far does whiteness go in abstracting the definite needs of a human to stay alive? 

"i no longer need the community to stay alive. all of the true life dependencies have been removed." she used to be able to say, when she was rich. she cannot claim these any more. 

for when it needs to be said over my dead body

she/her pronouns.
poet.
queer, in the most dangerous way.
a believer of liberation within a generation.
someone who always knew that the struggle alone is the struggle toward community is the struggle of the future of us all.
(when you grow up in a cult you learn this early.)

let them say that i screamed as much in the statehouse as in the streets.
let them say that when i had to choose to sue cops or hospitals, i chose the hospital, in the name of greater closer goods for us all.
let them say that i killed many, many zygotes, both mine and others'.
let them say that i abandoned conservative christian values for the opportunity to overturn the tables in the temple.
let them say that i grieved at every trans day of remembrance.
let them say i insisted on my right to autonomy even when no government, no economy, no family, no social structure has ever granted me that right.

one of many. one of the masses. 

you are the first broken system i learned to subvert
you are the first moral system i failed on purpose, to learn where i could find grace, so that i will never turn around to become a pillar of salt waiting for your lies to be true
you are my first dictator, my first fascist, my first perpetually violent state
you are the first one who did not believe i was human

what you remember of me is soft and funny and kind and sweet because that is resistance in my heart: you cannot turn me cold

what you remember of me is hard and absolute and unyielding and sharp because that is resistance in my soul: you cannot make me stop loving myself

or you.

you cannot make me stop loving myself or you.

you cannot make me envision a future in which my needs are met but not yours.

you cannot make me desire a future in which you are abandoned or alone.

you cannot make me daydream of a future without you. 

i dream of liberation in a generation for every single person who is alive.
i dream that your generation met microfiche, faxing, dial up, cell phones, wifi--i dream that you can meet democracy, granted rights, autonomy, and then actual freedom, much as you fear it. 

we all must fight.
and while i cannot fight beside you i pray still that you have arms to take up. i pray that you have ears that are willing to hear. i pray you have a heart that looks for others in the world, even if not me. 

i feel like i and my trauma exist in this middle ground that no one understands. 

to our left: the experiences that ought to have come with a two parent household above the poverty line, access to education and food and clothes, a sibling, books... we have nothing in common here 

to our right: the experiences of people who have been trafficked, kidnapped, prostituted, whose loved ones have been murdered, who have lived in bone grinding poverty... i have so much in common 

to our left: whiteness, class, suburbia, stable family finances, social connections, good schools, good neighborhoods, summer camps, nature excursions

to our right: abandonment, neglect, loathing, disdain, ignorance, dogma, narcissism, selfishness, myopia, fear, unhealed generational pain

there is no adjudication. there is no belonging

I am no longer sure of my ability to participate in the economy 

I feel a strong push to retract my impact on the world, to be less impactful whether good or bad 

who am i going to be in 2026?

not dead somehow. stupidly. still not dead. somehow. jesus, send that lightning strike anytime you're ready. 

smitten but not smote. lol. 

in 2026 another year older another year less stupid. another year less inclined to share, to trust, to communicate. so much less on offer than there used to be, and the doorway continuing to shrink. i would not change this trajectory even if i could. 

some health insurance might be nice. 

i really would be doing sex work and only sex work if i could figure out the logistics of it. 

in my 20s i think i did what i knew how to do as a child-- pray, and grind, and grind, and grind, and grind, and grind, and pray. still a belief system in which there is little hope, regardless of what i wrote in those years. i worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and built and constructed and buttressed and held firm and then it all exploded anyway. i am done working. 

who will i be in my 40s? god help us all. i hope drunk. 

that writing is finally coming back after so many years silent. (how funny to call the loudest years of my life silent, but when you are screaming, you are not drafting.) i still hope to never publish again. 

i hope no one ever knows my address ever again. i hope no one who wants to find me ever can. i hope my parents continue to put no effort into interacting with me (this feels like a secure possibility). 

in 2026 who will i be? 

i hope drunk. 

i can't say that i have ever understood people as a whole. 

why conversations seem to be simple exchanges of opinions without reflection or feedback.

why opinions seem to be something a parent said in the 1980s and never revisited. 

why truth seems as absolute as opinions, neither to ever be changed. 

i can't say that i understand grace, or nostalgia, or hope, or honesty. 

i am not sure why so many people need a mirror, not reality, facing them in order to not feel alone.

it would never occur to me to use chatgpt or an ai personality in any kind of questioning.

i am not sure why so many people have so many questions that are easily input into a computer model. 

i don't know why people question each other's opinions but not the systems we exist inside of together.

i suppose i have seen the bleeding edges of the answer to why so few people change. 

i have witnessed the dependence of an ego, an identity, on a story, even a story that does not make sense.

i cannot say i understand it, i cannot imagine what it would be like in that person's shoes. 

i do not know why so many people reflect me back to me in a way that is untouchable, intimidating, aloof.

i am not sure why i have been set apart by so many; it is not a location of my choosing.

that i have returned because the lake, my perpetual suicide note, is my comfort and the only place i feel i can put my back 

that i chose my first suicide method when i was in middle school, and have known ever since what i would choose if i could choose 

that i have always looked to the natural world for death and probably always will, that the mechanics of interpersonal violence do not belong in me 

twenty years of being lectured about flexibility and giving and kindness and respect and love from stone cold narcissists, from people who were taught at their parents' knees, in their church, across their whole lives, how to deny love and respect and kindness and giving and flexibility to their children. 

there's no way out of the trauma i hold. it will also die with me. i suppose i am learning to see that as a blessing. if it ends in me, when i end, it ends. if it does not end in me, when i end, it ends. 

why do other people not feel so much active conflict in their bodies about being alive in 2025? i am so acclimated to fighting systems, so deeply sensitive to macro movement in all of these structures and how to save my wee micro life from these macro death sentences. ray could not have done anything but live when married to me. i'll die mad at myself because that's what my bones are built of. 

i'm not crazy. i am not well adjusted to a toxic, horrific, consumptive, destructive ecosystem. i will never be well adjusted here. i will always stand at fundamental odds with capitalism, with classism, with racism, with sexism. i will never not be wearing armor. i will never not have my weaponry with me. 

i do not believe there is a way out. i do not believe the only way out is through. i believe we are standing still, waiting. i have always felt myself to be a woman standing still, waiting. waiting for my period, waiting for the next pay check, waiting for the bruises to fade, waiting for that bill to hit collections. standing still in the desert of my body. standing still in the vast, bare baked sands of capitalism. alone. 

try as i might i cannot envision myself as part of the great whole. i sense the body of the great movement, i smell the sweat of the generations and continents of work toward a beautiful future. but i am not a cog in that wheel. i am not a joint in that skeleton. 

and not a standout in the way of messengers, heralds, jesters, performers or musicians. not a voice to be listened to, not a talent to be appreciated, not an offering of a moment of love or joy or community. i am none of these things. 

i stand alone heavy with knowledge. no one stands with me because i stand in quicksand, holding weight, climbing upwards, never falling, always sinking. sisyphus but even upwards has been taken away. there is no path, there are no eagles, there is no sky. 

empty bottles only. the clank of layers of glass in the bottom of the recycling bin, and another added on top. empty hearts only. there is no path, there is no sky, there is no family, there is no self. 

here: only mud, only silt, only the soft slow grub of grains against skin. always suffocating, but this also means always breathing. too hard to kill, too strong to assimilate. i insist upon my right to be ground slowly down into a compilation of molecules. i demand the opportunity to die slowly, at odds with everything around me. 

i was taught that finding yourself in opposition to the entire world was mental illness. i do not think that that is true in 2025. 

should i believe that capitalism is the system that works best? should i believe that wages are fair? should i believe that wage employment is a worthwhile use of my time? should i believe that i will be treated well in any workplace? should i believe that any workplace is capable of being moral under capitalism? 

(reader please note that ANY workplace includes nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and churches)

what are nonprofits, service organizations, and churches except a structural way to slide resources down the chain without disrupting capitalism?

i would rather disrupt capitalism.

should i believe that all humans are capable of respecting all other humans? should i believe that i am safe when i am in public? should i believe that men don't desire coercion? should i believe that adults don't desire children?

(reader please note we could name micro and macro examples for every question cited)

what is social status except a structural way to enforce capitalistic valuation of human life?

i would rather disrupt capitalism. 

jude.

i'll learn your pronouns if it kills me.

it won't, because you're already dead. 

i wonder how your mother survives. 

it had not occurred to me that healing is only a relevant purpose for the living.

what do the dead wish for?

it had not occurred to me that the progress, the momentum, the forward motion of an individual is entirely lost at their death. 

what do the dead work for? 

jude. the songs, the singing, the karaoke, the voice, the voicelessness. baby i don't know why the world is so hard. i don't know why you had to be so wounded. i don't know why you had to contain so much and be received so little. i don't know why. but i saw you. for a bit. 

it had not occurred to me that seeing is only for the living, that the dead have no use for witnesses.

what do the dead dream for? 

 How many cycles of holding space for myself 

How many hours of crying alone 

How many hours of you have to process it you can’t heal it if you don’t feel it you have to open yourself up and feel it down to your bones 

No one else on the planet has any idea how many miles I have walked 

There is nowhere unopen to me 

There is nowhere I cannot journey, into you, into me, into anyone: there is no journey 

I do not intrinsically understand, no loss I have not charted in my own body and mind. 

I am not afraid of being alone. 

I am not afraid of you never loving me. 

I am not afraid of you never calling me. 

Whether or not you ever recognize your inability to see me does not pertain to the fact that I see me. 

Whether or not you ever recognize the receipts in your lap does not pertain to the fact that you are in debt to me. 

I don’t think many people know what it is like others to truly owe their physical existence to you. 

I have held your body and your mind and your soul in my hands and I have decided to preserve 

Your going out and your coming in, your mothers blessings, your brothers desperation. 

I have held your mind and your body and your soul in my hands and I have decided to preserve 

Your own sense of self, your ego, your pride, your wounding, the story of who you are.

You could not have done it alone. 

You are nothing alone. 

Growing into a presence that exists solo, a single pinprick of light in the vast expanse,

Requires cosmic combustion. Requires a ferocity of mass and burning and fuel and fire. 

Requires light. 

You can leave me and still I burn. You left me on fire and I am my own light now. 

 Dating profile 

Likes: cuffed sleeves, pretty ink, dimples, an easy humor, a gentle rapport 

Turn offs: getting impatient with customer service, crocs, ever calling the cops, organized religion of any kind, sexist jokes you think I’m gonna laugh at, ignoring babies or animals 

About me: absolutely batshit insane with a pussy that matches, daddy issues you can’t even imagine because you have never been in a cult, fire, anger, heat, churning, yearning, ferocious, fire, consumption, regret, disease, alcohol, utopia, praise, adoration 

Tastes like: salt and tears, cum and honey, chai and cinnamon, thyme and rosemary, old bay and white pepper,  basil and salt, salt and honey, cum and chai 

Listening to: your mother singing along to her Walkman in 1982