i'm still here?

This gorgeous poem by Chaia Heller

[Image ID: Screenshot of a poem titled "After Language". The poem reads, "When all the drowsy metaphors about women and fruit have been peeled and devoured;

there's just you, me a bowl full of summer peaches, two parentheses with nothing in between (just space) for the tongue's imagination" /end ID.]

Pansy ring, 1930s.

[Image Description: a photograph of a golden ring set with a blue pansy, with a white pearl in the center. End image description.]

PRAYER FOR WEREWOLVES from We are Mermaids by Stephanie Burt

[Text ID: "PRAYER FOR WEREWOLVES // Someone will probably love you for who you are. / If not, you'll still find friends, / friends who, given time, or given warning, / will probably gather around you, hold your hands, / and wrap you in soft coats and blankets till the violence / inside your body ends. // Someone will probably love you for who you are, / not just for who you labor to be. / Maybe you're lost in your skin today. Maybe you're burning / and wish you could tear it all off. Please don't. You are variously / a marvel, an athlete, a wilderness, a source of warmth / and a way to learn from fear. // When you have claws, your claws are yours, your ears / bristle and are yours; your irises / are citrine, pure, and yours. They let you see / through smog and pine thickets and into the future, where / you need no chains to feel secure, / and someone will probably love you for who you are: // then you will know each other's scents / and nuzzle or lope together. But for / now, you have friends, / who are not going anywhere. Please / stay here." -end ID]

yukio mishima, confessions of a mask

J. Logan Smilges, from the introduction to Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (2022)

story about a man who only ever dated women bodybuilders and is now dating a chubby guy: this was different from being with a woman. women, with their sharp edges and hard bodies, tongues battling for dominance. Josh was all soft curves and smooth skin,

Gender is a performance and it’s time to play the music it’s time to light the lights it’s time to meet the muppets on the muppets show tonight

this poem is about being nonbinary.

Image description: Alternating lines of text are surrounded by dark blue-green boxes to differentiate two speakers. I have represented this by bolding those lines.

There is a werewolf in the town.

Is that bad?

There is a werewolf in the town.

I'll take that as a yes.

How do you suggest we resolve this?

Well, what exactly is the issue?

There is a werewolf in the town.

Yes, okay, I heard you the first time. Is the problem that he is sometimes a wolf, or that he is sometimes a man?

A werewolf is a werewolf. How do you suggest we resolve this?

Work with me here.

The problem is that there is a werewolf.

What do you expect? Do you want me to un-make him? There are many men in the town, and a good number of domesticated wolves. What is the problem? That he was first a man, or first a wolf? Does that even matter? Why is the werewolf an issue?

He was first a man, and now he is a werewolf. There is a werewolf in the town.

Has he actually done anything wrong?

There is a werewolf in the town.

Was this forced upon him? Or did he choose to become a werewolf?

A werewolf is a werewolf.

I see. I think I understand now.

How do you suggest we resolve this problem?

You do not want there to be a werewolf in your town. As I see it there are three options. You could force him to pick between wolf and man, an agonizing divorce from his true being, simply so you do not have a werewolf in your town. You could force him from the town, which may come to be a blessing in the long run- for him, not you. Or you could allow him to integrate and accept that, in our society of men and wolves, there also live werewolves.

There is a werewolf in the town.

Yes, there is. Isn't that beautiful?

How do you suggest we resolve this?

I am beginning to believe that the werewolf is not the problem here.

— T Fleischmann, Syzygy, Beauty: An Essay (Sarabande Books, 2012)

[ID text: By describing something we place it at a distance. My body is a fleshy thing, my body is tall and filled with citrus. I want everyone I have touched to send me a postcard on which they describe their fingers, but mostly I want them to do this before I have the chance to ask. At night, my eyes are unable to understand depth. When I was young I climbed a tree playing flashlight tag. I sat in it so long I forgot how high I was and leapt to get down, the earth like a flat punch as I tumbled to my ribs. I write down 102 words that say what I see when I see you, how it is a flat punch to look at you. How does it feel to know you are something I look at? In the morning, dress yourself in the clothes I removed last night.

/end ID]

Silver and Muldoon share a moment. Click for better quality. Please do not repost :)

[Image ID: Screenshot of a line of text below the number 134. The text reads, "I conversed with you in a dream" /end ID.]

Wendy Carlos’s Moog Modular synthesizer

[ID: blue-toned old photo of a synthesizer. It includes several banks of modules with different dials, switches, and and ports connected by patch cords that loop in between different modules or levels of the synthesizer. They are stacked up and connected in a cabinet, with a keyboard at the bottom. End ID]

— Maddie C., from “Unwritten Mythology, Pt 2., ″ Taurogarchy

— Chen Chen, "a small book of questions: chapter iii," Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency