Olga

“Does anyone ever
want to leave their home?
The fresh fruit that drops from their backyard?

The neighbors who wiped their snot?
Does anyone ever
want to believe they won't come back?

To the dog that sniffs their heel,
to the bed that holds the echo of their body?
Is there relief in pretending it is temporary,

that one day it will be safe? That I will once again
wave to the kind school bus driver;
that I'll hold Carline's baby before he grows,

having never known me? They have no palm
trees in New York City, no leaves to shade me,
to brush against my cheeks like my mother's hands.

There is no one over there, alive or buried,
who held me as a child, who cradled me close,
who fed me from their table, who wiped my knees when

I fell & scraped them. Here, despite the bad & ugly,
is my home. & now I wish that I could stay. Does anyone ever
want to leave the place they love?”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat,”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

“No one ever shamed themselves into better mental health.”
― K.C. Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning