Status Updates From These Are the Words: Fearle...

TELL ME AGAIN
About your wins,
about the time when you got it all right,
about all the things that hurt you
that made you fall in love,
about everyone who stayed and left.
It is a joy to hear you speak
and know everything about you.
If friendship is anything,
it is this, it is this,
it is this.

My mother says to me: ‘Good, you’re angry. Stay angry. Now tell me how you plan to use it to make this world a better place.’

Do not allow the anger to consume you. Instead, grieve today. Scream. Punch a pillow. Cry. Do what you need to, for tomorrow you must rise and fight again.
...

Do not let the rage and disappointment and sadness curdle into inaction. Instead, let them rise inside your belly as hope, and fight.

VOTE
Because nothing will change
unless you fight for it,
believe in it,
campaign for it,
hold it with the same love
with which you hold your own ambitions,
your own dreams.

We have been taught to use
our politeness as a shield
when it also unsheathes swords;
that one time you smiled too much,
and that guy took it as an invitation,
and followed you for days.
And the memory of the last boy you rejected
spread rumours about you sleeping around.
And the recollection of the man who heard the word no,
but thought that was how good girls said yes.
This isn’t survival, this is defence mechanism

This is the age where you learn
telling your parents about the catcall
means a lessening of your freedom.
They’ll say they trust you but not the world,
and yet it’s not the world that must give up
walking the fastest way to school
because the grown man living on that street
won’t stop being inappropriate with you.
–Stop punishing the victims and start holding the creeps accountable for their actions!

You are angry and anxious
because you never agreed
to live in a burning home
while the people who should care
pretend the fire doesn’t exist.
Distress is a valid emotional response
to injustice.

Every poem was exactly what I needed to hear.

Trauma knows where you live.
It knocks on your door when you least expect it,
finds you at a friend’s birthday or wedding,
in the bathroom when you are getting ready,
...To the people who are living with the aftermath,
know that it is okay not to be strong for anyone.
That you are still a survivor,
when your body’s wracked with sobs,
Hiding under your blanket,
wishing you could disappear.
That doesn’t make you small.

In this moment:
know that you are not alone.
The spirits of all of us walk beside you.
Even if you feel lonely right now,
just remember there is a reason
why the pride flag is a rainbow.

Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things
and trying to make life worth living,
and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,
but I believe in that.