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Something about resilience. Or being dead inside but still here. Something someone has already said. I saw these little brown flowers on my walk. They’re probably weeds and maybe that’s why they’re so good at staying where they don’t seem to belong. That’s how I feel living in my hometown right now. Like an invasive species, thousands of miles away from where I was meant to be, brought here only by some cruel fate designed to make me feel misunderstood and useless. Maybe I can dig me out and take me to where I’m native. I used to think you could only feel native to a place if you lived there your whole life. But some things sit somewhere from the beginning to the end, and are still not native. Native to me now means something different. I think you belong somewhere where you don’t just merely survive, but where you flourish. Maybe. But for a while, if you have to be a little dull and surrounded by snow, stay close to the sidewalks. Someone will see you and stop and know the strange feeling of kinship shared not with another human, but with another life.
Feb 11, 2025
Related Recs
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a couple months ago I'm out behind the gabled house with dregs of home still seeping through its edges, a sharp sort of newness ripping the seams of who I am & who I was, sweaty fingers slipping from between each other with the bloodied grasp of desperation - it is a spring day, and I am here again. the leaves are new and the blinking infant furled in the strands of my chest takes a breath and every time I trudge through these vine-ridden woods I feel her grubby hands trace the creases in my ribcage. there are ghosts here, the soulmate-friend across the ocean and I and the way we'd take axes to the already-fallen trees like our anger was spraying away with the bark and we were left with only breeze. there are the phantoms of our hands stuck in the mud, ripped leaves beneath our fingernails as we unclogged the flow of the creek and watched the water dig its trenches deeper, and now i'm watching it capture the light of a new year in my hometown alone. through the leaves and over the tinny chorus of water-on-rock I hear the echoes of a mother calling to her children in a game of hide-and-seek, her children laughing, the clamor of it like a memory captured on tape and played back. there is a hole here, radio waves rippling through years folded back and punched through, I a bystander to the reminiscence of a stranger years down the line when some part of that laughter will be lost. it is here. it is here now, in the backyard of a house I sometimes call home.
May 5, 2025
I plant catnip and potatoes on the rooftops of the city that lives in my chest, two small pots per ledge, their roots cramped, curling inward like fists. I force them to suffocate. I watch as their leaves yellow and curl, not out of malice, but out of necessity. There’s something about watching something struggle to live that feels honest. The skyline here isn’t real, not exactly. It's built from memory, scaffolding of places I loved once and forgot twice. Still, I look out from the edge, eyes scouring the metal bones and glass spines of buildings I invented. And I wonder: Can anyone see me?
Would they, if I let one toe slip past the ledge? Would the silhouette mean anything to anyone but me?
I tell myself you’ll visit. That you’ll stand beside me, close enough to breathe in the scent of dying herbs and know what I meant by planting them. Maybe you’ll even pretend to like the catnip. But the world, the world, you know how it is. Men ruin everything. They turn good things into threats, into warnings. And because of them, I can't see you like I want to. Not without caution. Not without fear.
I hate them for it. For ruining us before we even began. For taking my access to you and replacing it with conditions.
So I wait. I wait for your knock on my door like prayer, and every time you come, I open. I always open. I don’t say it, but you should know, I would burn the whole city for you if you asked. I would uproot every pot and split the sky open just to hand you the sun in shards.
But I only have two pots. I want three. I want a hundred. But sometimes two is already too many, and no one else knows that.
Come to the rooftop. Even if it’s just to see the wilting leaves. Even if it’s just to say goodbye.
Jun 24, 2025
Some new thing is growing inside me. Against all odds, it flourishes in the dead heat, this brittle, barren mindscape I call mine. Nothing should grow here. The air is dry and mean; the ground splits apart like scorched parchment. Like skin, peeling from a nose too long in the sun. And everywhere, snakes. They don’t strike unless I forget to watch. But they’re there. Coiled. Waiting.
I don’t long for high school. That’s nostalgia’s lie, that it was ever better than now. It wasn’t. But I do miss something as stupid as socks over skinny jeans. There was a kind of armor in that. A loud, silly defiance.
Back then, I let people peel them off. I thought that meant something. That if someone wanted to strip you down, you were wanted.
Now, my socks stay hidden. Worn under the jeans, dull and quiet. They’re toe socks, ridiculous, maybe, but mine. No one sees them. No one knows that I wiggle my toes in my shoes all day, a private protest. A quiet comfort. They protect me from the sharp, glassy stones littering the creek bed. And maybe that’s all I need: something small, something mine, against the jagged things that would tear me open if they could.
Jul 8, 2025
Top Recs from @lottydotty
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saw the Turnstile NEVER ENOUGH movie and then immediately listened to Addison Rae’s debut album 10/10 all around had the best night ever last night!!!!!
Jun 6, 2025
@tyler
STAFF
Beautiful and whimsical and very reminiscent of bossa nova. Floaty ethereal vocals and quick flowing beats. A great “cleaning my apartment“ record (or going for a walk, or reading a book, or painting my nails, etc)
Feb 11, 2025