mayainwritingland

[mayainwritingland]

One. I cry the first time I shoot an M-16. The blast is louder than I expected, the gunpowder sharp in my nose. I count the holes on the cardboard target. It's shaped like a person. Like a soldier. Its body punctured with bullets. I want to call my mom and ask her to take me home. I want to be anywhere but here.

Two. For a few weeks in second grade, we go to school carrying gas masks. They come in small rectangular boxes the teachers let us decorate with colorful stickers.

It's been months since the last siren, but I keep the steel window in the safe room half closed, afraid to tempt faith.

I still search for the nearest shelter. Still wear only one earbud when I take the dog for a walk. I'm privileged, I remind myself every restless night. Privileged.

Three. When we tell each other "Be careful," we mean life is fragile. There was another terror attack today. I love you. I'm scared. Here is a cute video of a panda taking a bath. Be safe. Here is a satire about the state of our government. Tell me you got home safely. I don’t know how to shield you from any of this.

Four. Every car on my street has a yellow ribbon tied to the door handle. They are everywhere I look. Wrapped around railings and wrists and tree branches. We didn't forget you, they say. We are sorry. We rememberwerememberweremember.

[mayainwritingland]

“Trapped”

Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg

@/lilboyblueish on Instagram

Poem by Keaton St. James (@boykeats)

I/Me/Myself - Will Wood

We Both Laughed In Pleasure by Lou Sullivan

cis people asking cis questions by Silas Denver Melvin (@sweatermuppet)

Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote

[mayainwritingland]

social skills training, solmaz sharif

[mayainwritingland]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[mayainwritingland]

“hamlet tries prozac” by tawanda mulalu, from his book please make me pretty, i don’t want to die (princeton series of contemporary poets, 2022)

[mayainwritingland]

I've been thinking about the word "Occupation." How to occupy means to fill, to exist in. How controversial our existence has become. I've been thinking about how a land can have many names. Many children who sow and built and lived and called it home. Many stories of exile and longing. How one side doesn't have to be wrong for the other to be right. How in some cases you can steal something that was already yours. How maybe a homeland is not a place you own, but a place you nourish. A place you build. A place you love. How many wars start in the name of love. How easy it is to forget we are the same.

#spilled ink #writing #ישראבלר #poem #כמה שמאלני זה מ1 עד 12?

[mayainwritingland]

it's just that there's a few more steps you have to take that other people don't have to take, but they don't see the steps, so they think you should be able to hop from moment to moment, a chickadee.

it isn't getting out of bed. it is the weight, the hook in your chest, the anchor. you have to move the anchor first. you have to silence your alarm, but your phone is in your hand, which means now you have to put the phone down, which is too-hard. you get stuck in there for a while, the white screen, mindlessly scrolling. you don't even like this activity, have tried a few other options but - here you are, and time is passing.

you've googled iron deficiency causes depression and if i drink enough water does it help with mental illness and anxiety but no caffiene within the last two weeks, like how you googled am i gay quiz at 17.

it isn't just calling the doctor back, it's the anxiety, it's these little moths in your lung cavities, furious and fluttering. you need to figure out how to capture your fingers from between their nervous bodies. you are an adult, you can say the words yes hi, i'm calling because i need - but you need to practice first. maybe write it down because what if you misspeak, wouldn't that be embarrassing. write it down, but you need to find a pen first. well, actually, your desk is kind of messy. you should get a new pen. you should get a new organizational system. you should try journaling.

your grades in school were always strange. the way teachers would say things like it feels like you're not trying. you could touch stars in the stuff you cared about. well, sometimes. god be willing. homework average zero. oops! your english teacher's wrinkled brow: i know you know this stuff. what the fuck are you doing?

it isn't the showering, it's the mirror before the shower and the soft horrible pull of your naked physique. you have to avoid eye contact completely or else it'll be 93 minutes later and you'll have picked at your skin until every little pore is bleeding. you have to stand up but standing is tiring and also you should have remembered to buy more soap but you never remember anything. maybe get out of the shower and while it's still running and you're still dripping wet, use your phone to take a note. make a note to get your groceries. let the shower run while you stand half-in half-out and get lost in your phone for a moment. come back out when the water runs cold and now you have to sprint to get ready.

your grandmother's frown. you're just being lazy. protestant work ethics in a house that isn't even protestant. she says she just learned different but she means learned better, doesn't she.

it's not that you can't send the email, it's that your hands have been hurting lately and the desk really is messy and also why the fuck would you even care about this thing? doesn't everyone else feel like they're drowning? hi brendon thanks so much for sending! will review and get back to you shortly. but now you're on the internet, close the tab with tumblr on it. go on, close it. feel the little soft vapor of boredom come up and over your eyeteeth and make everything overwhelming and itchy.

literally all you have to do is put on shoes to go outside. you're literally already dressed, that's the hard part of this whole thing. literally just put the shoes on. just... do it! do it! this shit is easy!

it's literally that easy. just stop taking all those stupid invisible steps. stop following your strange made-up rules. times like this, even you're positive you're faking. you just don't want to bother with the cleaning and the cooking and the being-an-adult.

but then - shouldn't you be able to put these stupid shoes on? nobody's even looking. go on kid. life is out there! just take the leap!

get moving.

[mayainwritingland]

Beyond the shelter walls 

There is rain

And flowers

Cars drive through the empty streets 

A Pink Floyd song plays on the old radio

One man stands alone on a traffic island

Holding a flag 

But it's unclear in support of who.

#writing #poetry #spilled ink #ישראבלר #israel #poets of tumblr

[mayainwritingland]

The phone rings at 07:15.

Bright, October light washes over the room. I blink, wondering who is calling me at seven in the morning on a Saturday. It's my Dad. Probably a mistake, I think. I'll call him back later.

I curl deeper under my yellow, polka dots blanket, but before sleep comes, the phone rings again.

"May May" my little sister's voice is on the other side of the line. She is the only person who ever came up with a special nickname for me. "Did you hear there were sirens? Are you in the safe room?"

Half asleep, I'm trying to understand if the threat is real. She is eleven years old and scared, and I'm twenty-eight and lived through enough military operations to know the rockets rarely reach our city. Whatever happened this time, it can wait until I'm properly awake.

The siren is heard at 10:54. I'm lying on my mother’s bed with my laptop open before me, trying to prepare for the thesis defense I have tomorrow between chilling news reports from the retro radio on the bedside table.

I grab the dog by her collar and we run to the Merkhav Mugan, the safest place in the house, which in our apartment, is my bedroom.

We already closed the steel window earlier, just in case. The last time we did it, it got stuck and I had no air or natural light in the room for months.

We sit on the floor. Far away from the window and wait.

My Instagram feed is full of pictures of missing people. Everyone knows someone who went to that party. Everyone has friends or family in the Otef. Everyone is scared. Everyone is grieving. I don't know how to feel.

There is no escape from the videos. The pictures. The stories. The things I thought could only happen in faraway places, deep enough in history to be almost forgotten. The kind of horrors you only read about in textbooks, comforted by the knowledge the threat is long gone.

But the threat is here.

My long-awaited thesis defense arrives, and I pray the next forty-five minutes will be quiet. Do I get extra points if there is a siren in the middle of the Zoom? I read aloud a chapter I wrote about a fictional war, and the line between reality and fiction becomes blurry. I started writing that novel when I was eighteen years old, trying to make sense of the reality I grew up in. But I still don't understand anything.

You should write a memoir someday, one of the professors tells me. But it doesn't feel like my story. I spent most of my life wanting to be anywhere else. While everyone is searching for ways to help, I want to take the first plane out of here and let it all be someone else's worry. Someone else's pain.

But it's my home that's under attack. My people. My community.

I can't strip off this identity. I can't pretend everything is normal.

I don't know where I'm going from here.

#i've been trying to find a way to write about this for the past few days #i still don't really have the words #but it feels important to share what I can #ישראבלר #Israel

[mayainwritingland]

THE ONE ACTUAL PICTURE OF US I KNOW OF by Bob Schofield

for Kaylee

[mayainwritingland]

Safia Elhillo, from Home Is Not a Country; “The Stranger”

[mayainwritingland]

- Ollie Schminkey, My Father.

[mayainwritingland]

prodigal knight

a pearl, mitski / oh, no, marina / snow & dirty rain, richard siken / let me be reborn as an alarm clock by amatullah bourdon, (@butchniqabi) / underbelly, nicole homer / why are you haunted? a survey, joan tierney (@filmnoirsbian​)

[mayainwritingland]

The first time our eyes met across a crowded room, it was not love at first sight. Love did not grab me by the throat. Instead when I looked at you, I saw the flowers in the meadow I used to play in as a child. What I mean to say is, every time I think of you, I remember the safest, most sacred place I ever knew. Every time I touch you, my whole body blossoms with wildflowers.

Nikita Gill

[mayainwritingland]

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (trans. Richard Howard) [ID in ALT]

[mayainwritingland]

Louise Glück, Averno

[mayainwritingland]

There's this longing in me to make the things that could possibly go wrong right. It's as if I never run out of breath trying to chase something as delirious as a fleeting cloud. Maybe they were right when they warned me to not look back but strangely they always make sure that I look who is beside. Life definitely is petals and thorns but wouldn't it be cool if you perceived all the thorns to be petals instead? I know it would still sting and you might even bleed but now you would bleed serenity and hope. A hope that would cost you few hours or even weeks of gruesome sting in your heart and soul but it would be worth it because the closure is just so great that you can't help but come out brand new, shining and glimmering. Well, the critics who chastise you, calling you fake behind your back, themselves are the one's who never were their authentic self all along. See how far you've come and the best thing is that you were recklessly true to yourself.