I Have A Theory That The Venn Diagram Of Josette Maskin And Julien Baker Girls (gender Neutral) Is A

Marcel Proust, from a letter featured in The Selected Letters of Marcel Proust

#sister Mary loquacious

lucy dacus and katie gavin by vivian kim / cindy crawford and k.d. lang by herb britts

On not feeling your age

I wake up and there is a teenage magpie

Sitting on the windowsill in my parents bedroom

It still wears it’s baby feathers

When the mother comes to find it they are the same size but she is sleek and sharp-beaked

high heels and pencil skirt to the unicorn-print jumper of it’s downy fluff

It sits on the windowsill, opening and closing its wings

It won’t look down, and it squawks at us when we come close, but it won’t fly away either

This summer I feel like that teenage magpie

I love this house but it’s starting to feel like something I am too old to keep

It feels like playing with your little sister just so you can have a turn with the dollhouse

Even though you’re already thirteen and you know (you know!) you’re too old

There is something in my bones that tells me I should be getting a mortgage right about now

I don’t dream about romance. I’ve no clue how people my age go about procuring that kind of thing

but sometimes I feel like I should be thinking about where to go for my wedding anniversary, or whether the babysitter will be available that night

Then I sit in the back seat of a car with my parents in the front and I feel like I should be setting my alarm for six thirty

Polishing my black lace up shoes and looking under my bed for the tie I carelessly discarded the night before

I was born middle aged and yet I’m still a child at twenty

How did everyone else learn to act their age when I wasn’t looking?

Maybe I have arrested my own development

Because I don’t want to outgrow this yet

This bedroom, this seat at the dinner table, this spot next to my mother on the couch at night

This life tastes sweet like orange juice

But I wonder where everyone else is getting the vodka I’m watching them add

there is a demon in your house named CARBON MONOXIDE. he enchants your mind with confusion and your body with exhaustion. you need to call a powerful exorcist named HVAC TECHNICIAN

Brother Gregor never spoke and often spooked the neophytes with his appearance, but he was a gentle soul and a phenomenal cook and knew more ways to prepare a fish than the abbot knew hymns

Forest Scene (1870) by Thomas Moran

(OC)2023 - the year of the Rat Girl Summer by ArblemarchFruitbat

On moving out

We are all still here together

The sound of my brother’s guitar still creeps into my room long after his 11pm curfew

Next year those fugitive notes will wind themselves furtively through other walls

This summer though, everyone’s shoes still sit on the shoe rack

The key hooks are full

We still buy sultana bran and jatz crackers and his brand of shaving cream when we go shopping

This summer feels like a full moon

Whole and round, like a cake nobody has cut into

Yet

It’s candles are flickering brightly

But I can hear the first chords of happy birthday

He will come back, of course.

But will he have grown while I’m not looking?

A tree falling in a forest full of people other people I don’t know

Schroedinger’s little brother

What will I no longer know about him

This bright creature, eagerly unfurling from his chrysalis while I still find myself wriggling, fuzzy and green

Curly headed rogue

I will send all of my nicest things with you

Pistachio cake and dandelion wishes and that warm staticky feeling when you get the harmony just right

Recount your adventures to me when you get home

Who knows? Maybe when you return I will have grown too

and we will show each other our new colours