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

“Trauma knows where you live” (p.91).

“Sometimes that is it. It is still a love story, just one that ended (p.41).

“May you find someone who makes you a poet” (p.33).

“Listen, the boy may not be Apollo, but he wears poetry on his skin, and carries healing in his voice” (p.29).

“She may leave. Wild things often do” (p.18).

“you do not have to be a wildfire if you do not want to be” (p.5).

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