you’re not alone, someone else is reading this post at the same time as you
— fatima aamer bilal; coffin heart? bury me.
website
What she says: im fine
What she means: the average age of conception over the past 250k years is apparently 26.9. Let's round it down to 25. Think of your birth mother. Hold her hand. Imagine her holding hands with her mother. Within 4 people, you're back in time 100 years, and it's an intimate family dinner. Just after WWI. Add another 16 people, a small party of 20, and you're in the 1500s. Double it, twice, and you're at 80 people. Your family would fill a restaurant, and you're at the height of the Roman empire. At 100 people, Confucius is alive but Socrates has not yet been born. 100 people. That's a medium sized wedding. A small lecture theatre or concert. 200 people, probably the biggest party i could ever hope to host, takes you back 5000 years. The guests at your soirée of parents would be contemporaries of the Egyptian and Indus Valley civilisations, although you'd probably be too busy fixing drinks and nibbles to talk to all of them. Just imagine it. 200 of you. That's all it takes to get back 5,000 years. And we could go further. 1000 people, a decent sized concert, a large high school, and we're at the end of the last ice age. Your ancestors are comparing their pink floyd vinyl with music played on instruments carved from wood or bones of long vanished species. Wander through the crowd. See your own features and phrases and gestures refract out like a kaleidoscope. What would they make of you? What do you make of them? Why does it feel so unfair that even that first 100 years --that small family dinner of four--is out of your grasp? Maybe it's because questions of spatial distance have become negligible to us now. why, oh why, does time hold out against us so stubbornly
- f.k.q
a poem I wrote for Gaza :
How do you speak of a sacred earth beneath your feet,
Then sow seeds of sorrow where prayers meet?
Tell me, how does holiness reign in the land,
When mosques and churches crumble by your hand?
Where is the sanctity in smoldering skies,
In ancient trees set ablaze before our very eyes?
These silent sentinels, older than your lineage, burn—
How can you claim this holy ground, yet spurn
Its very essence with fire and fury unleashed,
Turning sanctuaries into battlegrounds, peace deceased?
How can you belong to a land you scar,
And still stand before it, claiming to bear its star?
ن -
BEE LB, from "friction polish"
Tony Hoagland, from "Don’t Tell Anyone"
“Range Life” by Jordan Bolton
Order my new book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky
thank your local trans girl for being alive right now
Being in a group chat with a bunch of mentally ill girls who suck at taking care of ourselves is really funny. We’ll constantly be giving each other advice like “hey you should probably eat something” “have you taken your meds today?” “if you’re not feeling well maybe you should get some sleep” and stuff like that and then none of us have the self awareness and self respect to take the advice we give each other until we we hear it from someone else