"Getting people to understand that language itself is a means through which people can be harmed, elevated, or valued is really important." - Lal Zimman

the term penetration implies (and reinforces) the idea that sex is from the male perspective

If you want to insult a woman, call her a prostitute. If you want to insult a man, call him a woman.

It ( Read more... )

"I have scars on my hands from touching certain people." - J.D. Salinger

Trying to grasp the moment itself is like clutching a fistful of broken glass. It cuts me open. I fall out of myself.

In the morning my pain was mostly just the ache of being in the world

After all our years together, she was exquisitely legible to me.

I developed a habit of ( Read more... )

Everybody liked her, and like many well-liked people, she worried that if people really got to know her, if they managed to penetrate that glancing shield of likability, they wouldn't actually like her one bit.

It was that she missed Pearl despite her presence. An anticipation of missing

'Arctic' comes from the Greek word for bears - Antarctic ( Read more... )

suicide is a folded hand

hard eyes and a liar's smile

the dark throat of the drive

like a poorly kept secret

He was a liar, but the best liars are the ones that stick closest to the truth, so I believe it.

looked at her like she was ice water in July

She fought like an apocalypse, like a great and inevitable ending.

the tap water tastes like blood ( Read more... )

Delilah Bard wasn't a soft bed on a summer morning. She was a blade in the dark, dazzling, and dangerous, and sharp.

a breathy melodic thing that broke down against his ears

an arrogance that read as danger

woken the next morning with no memory and wet hair

Rhy knew how to be a prince, a rogue, a brother, a son. He had no idea how to be a king.

( Read more... )

You see, the trouble is, I'm a skeptic. But I am also tired of God being dead.

If modern Witchcraft had a bible, it would probably be the internet. Just, the whole thing.

In Wicca, we were no longer ribs.

Perhaps this is the real meaning of Witchcraft: grab whatever resonates and doesn't run away too fast.

Nobody does anything alone, and anyone who ( Read more... )

My mother, a Shakespeare professor, would note wistfully to me that some of the Bard's feistiest and most loquacious heroines, including Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, ceased to have any lines after their dramatically conclusive marriage alliances.

[Anita] Hill had no husband to vouch for her virtue, no children to affirm her worth, as women's ( Read more... )

"There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors." -Adrienne Rich

Writing has always been a way to reconcile my lived experiences with the narratives available to describe it (or lack thereof).

You known the need to engrave things.

Remember: this is a hard hustle to break. It is difficult to keep some ( Read more... )

"No One Asked for This" by Cazzie David

Going on your phone is easily the most effective way to dissociate and forget you're a person, which I am on a quest to do at all times, considering what I feel when I am in my own body.

I know for a fact the saying "God doesn't give you anything you can't handle" isn't true because if it were, then God ( Read more... )

[The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist]

The first clear written description of abortion dates back to 1550 BCE in Egypt

It's a tiresome and, unfortunately, still true fact that, if men like something a woman does, they assume another man must have helped her do it.

Whatever one things ( Read more... )