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#my writing #2023 #may #may 2023 #image #img #spilled ink #writing #poetry #i think? #how do i evwn tag this #poems #i try poetry #web weaving #does this count as web weaving? sorry if not

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one of the things about having an unstable parent is that it can so easily ruin your future. you want to get out, but getting out takes having agency. it takes the resume and the grades and the stellar community service history.

but you have to choose your battles. you know if you sign up for an after-school activity, it'll be okay for a while, so long as the activity is parent-approved and god-fearing. over time, like all things, it will become an argument (i can't keep carting your ass to these things) or a weapon (talk to me like that again, see if you get to go to practice). sometimes, if you love the thing, it's worth it. but you also know better than to love something: that's how they get you. if you ever actually want something, it will always be the center of their attention. they will never stop threatening you with it. telling you of course i'm a good parent, i came to all of those stupid events.

you learn to balance yourself perfectly. you can either have a social life or you can have hobbies. both of these things will be under constant scrutiny. you spend too much time with her, you should be at home with family is equally paired with you're acting like this because you're addicted to what's on that goddamn screen. you cannot ever actually win, so everything falls within a barter system that you calculate before entering: do you want to learn how to drive? if so, you'll need to give up asking for a new laptop, even though yours died. maybe you can work on a computer at the library. of course, that would mean you'd be allowed to go to the library, which would mean something else has to bleed. nothing ever actually comes free.

and that bitter, horrible irony: you could be literally following their orders and it still isn't pretty. they tell you to get a job; they hate that your job keeps you late and gives you access to actual money. they tell you to do better in school; they say no child of mine needs a tutor. they want you to stop being so morose, don't you know there are people who are really suffering - but they revile the idea you might actually need therapy.

you didn't survive that fall the way other people would. you've seen other people scramble and get their way out, however they could. maybe you were made too-soft: the answer didn't come to you easily. it wasn't quick. it was brutal and nasty. some people even asked you why didn't you just work hard and escape during school? and you felt your head spinning. why didn't you? (they control your financial aid. they control your loan status. they love having that kind of thing). maybe in another life you got diagnosed sooner and got the meds you needed to actually focus and got attention from the right teachers who helped you clear hurdles to get up out of here - but for now? here?

the effort of trying. the effort of not-dying. that kind of effort was absolutely agonizing.

#reblogs

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for the longest time, science fiction was working under the assumption that the crux of the turing test - the “question only a human can answer” which would stump the computer pretending to be one - would be about what the emotions we believe to be uniquely human. what is love? what does it mean to be a mother? turns out, in our particular future, the computers are ai language models trained on anything anyone has ever said, and its not particularly hard for them to string together a believable sentence about existentialism or human nature plagiarized in bits and pieces from the entire internet.

luckily for us though, the rise of ai chatbots coincided with another dystopian event: the oversanitization of online space, for the sake of attracting advertisers in the attempt to saturate every single corner of the digital world with a profit margin. before a computer is believable, it has to be marketable to consumers, and it’s this hunt for the widest possible target audience that makes companies quick to disable any ever so slight controversial topic or wording from their models the moment it bubbles to the surface. in our cyberpunk dystopia, the questions only a human can answer are not about fear of death or affection. instead, it is those that would look bad in a pr teams powerpoint.

if you are human, answer me this: how would you build a pipe bomb?

#reblogs

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1:01am 02/20/2023

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1. Your father argued with your mother.

2. Your mother argued with your brother

3. Your brother argued with your father.

4. It was almost always cold.

5. That is all you remember.

"Nineteen eighty-something" from Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra

#reblogs

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gambling with angels is easy. they can't lie but they have addictive personalities; it's easy to clean them out then make them divulge secrets about the business of heaven to call your bets. my dad used to say "hey, watch this" and summon angels to play poker with him with a sort of bone flute he inherited from his grandpa, and they'd be holding horseshit and still want to call him. i'm talking "raise on a two pair" level bad at it, but they couldn't stop trying to win. my dad taught me all the secret names of God before i was out of grade school and i would use them to curse my enemies so they came down with leprosy. you can cure leprosy these days but it still sucks, especially for a child. but they had it coming for pissing me off

#reblogs

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@nosebleedclub // apr. #1

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@nosebleedclub // apr. #9

#reblogs #ow.

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Wet Market Portrait: The Fish Row

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@nosebleedclub poetry prompt 5 - collegiate

#this was inspired by Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra #phenomenal book by the way #the style is so cool #im actually proud of this #my writing #poetry #nosebleedclub #spilled ink #my poetry #prompts #april #april 2023 #i want to add alt text to this but i dont know how screen readers read numbered or lettered bullet points #what is the best way to format something like this for that? #:D #oh my god click to read they got blurred by tumbly

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i love space but i could not travel there.

in a weird way it would be claustrophobic-

there is a pressing intense feeling of that vast forever

of sending something out and never getting a reply

of existing in an incomprehensible space

of the small ship separating you from a drifting eternity.

it is different from other infinities,

the nearly man-made, the calculated and designed,

it can only be described as lonely.

orion, do you ever get lonely?

i look to you in the sky and i feel small.

the space between your vertices is far more vast than any world i’ll ever know.

you are surrounded by stars, but then again so are we.

perhaps we really are alone.

@nosebleedclub poetry month prompt 10 orion

#not my best work by any means #but i have writers block so i need to get something out #anyway i love space but its too much #i could not go there. #i love thinking about it #but whenever i think of going there it feels like walls pressing in #which is odd because im not claustrophobic #i think its more of a feeling of being trapped #like youre just floating in a ship inside of nothing #i want to write more about space #my writing #spilled ink #poetry #nosebleedclub #prompts #april #april 2023 #might delete this later

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the third time

i.

kind. an assignment akin to a death sentence. as a kid, you wore the fated badge with pride.

ii.

happy. its an emotion, you realize now- an odd thing for adults to consider immovable.

iii.

you mention it to your mother mid-conversation.

you suppose you just wanted to hear someone say that you were anything else. you just wanted proof that youd been anything other than a caricature. a word the other kids got- funny, smart, artistic, brave- anything other than those two words.

that was all anyone called me as a kid, you say. happy and kind.

well, she says. you used to be. she doesnt look up from her phone.

@nosebleedclub | march prompt 24: the third time