Late Spring By Mary Oliver

But honey, I was born with the world crumbling around my mother's hospital bed

I grew up stepping around the shards with childish innocence

If you didn't want me to take up weapons,

you shouldn't have shattered the world with yours.

I saw a city die

However dramatic we make death out to be, really, a human death is quite easy. Your heart stops. Once. One kind of death for everyone.

Have you ever seen a city die? It's not one death. It's uncountable. A tree so big you can't watch its fall. Like you can't watch the sun travel. There it is. You get distracted. Something flashes on your wall. You look out. It is gone.

A city's deaths are very varied. Some are gardens dying. Some gardens don't die, but really they do. Really, they're dead.

Some are wild trees dying. The ones we watered by mistake, or by a thread of benevolence. Strung through palms and generations, maybe. A collective nurturing, and every solitary splash thought it was alone. They die, until they become the kind of sticks who's snaps are anonymous. There is nothing here.

Some are people leaving. There are a lot of those. But if you watch people leave, you notice they were the ones who came in the first place. Not the ones who already were.

The ones who already were always are. They are the city. Killing an elephant takes rounds of lead to the heart. Still it takes hours untill it falls, days until it stops breathing. It's not easy, killing a dragon. Those that are must be killed differently. They do not leave. But you can make their home hostile to them. Twist and contort it until those that are have no place to be. They find a new spot, of course. A new city. Who's life blood they aren't.

A city dies a hundred deaths. Like watching someone assemble a puzzle, it's not dramatic enough to watch the process. Like sand falling. Suddenly the glass is empty.

The problem is the body. It's our symbol, vessel and object of death. Without it we don't recognise decay.

Death of a city is the rarest thing you'll see. The bigger, the less you see it. The most imposing, the less you'll watch. The more lights, the less you notice the void.

Because it's a lie. And when you notice. Finally notice,

all you see are the whisps; floating. No sound. Unwatched. No meaning in silence. Nothing. Pathetic in the way they outline whatever isn't there anymore.

Danez Smith, from "summer, somewhere"

isn't it a bit crazy that when I was young I wanted everything you can think of and now all I genuinely want is peace

YOU CAN MAKE THE WORLD A KINDER PLACE BY BEING KIND! THAT’S ALL IT TAKES!!

You've never heard AnnenMayKantereit soulfully cry about how Love is saying the truth and it being so easy, the easiest words being "no" and "I'm not ready yet" and how she makes every day so simple and the biggest question is what they'll do today and how maybe, just maybe, this time it could work, because she is sweet and compassionate and loves snow in winter and every season and this time, it could work, it would be so beautiful if this time, maybe it could work, maybe- and it shows.

you worry the cardboard sleeve around the coffee and think about landfills and the future without straws. you are worried about prion disease and deer. you are worried about the rising temperature of mushrooms. you are worried about teflon and microplastics and carcinogens and whatever else you're being quietly lied to about.

your mother used to jokingly say you are "a worrier," which always kind of oddly hurt your feelings. you feel like a person. and besides, you've been told one-million-times that this is normal. examples get trotted out in a pony show each time: everyone gets nervous sometimes. they talk about public speaking and picturing people naked and how when they get nervous they just-get-over-it.

you run your hands down the grater of your life and feel the sharpness. you started holding your breath in tunnels as a kid, worried that if you relax, the ceiling would cave in. like years of architects and engineers weren't responsible - you, and your faith, you were responsible for the success of infrastructure. if you slipped for a moment, your whole family would be swept away under the ocean. and the problem is that it worked - no tunnel collapsed.

you once broke a coffee carafe and even though you didn't drink from it after, you worried that there had been some previous invisible micro-break that had made you drink glass particles. you stayed awake for 24 hours, constantly dreading each swallow, waiting to taste blood.

you hate being late, you worry about it. you go to grab literally just lunch with a friend - no pressure, no emergency - and you still park the car an hour early and just sit there scrolling on your phone aimlessly. maybe you just don't like surprises or change. you triple-check you locked the doors, and then go to bed, and then get up out of bed to check twice again.

a worrier. like a strange and dreadful bingo card, you collect weekly experiences. someone tells you that you're overthinking, that's 2 points. you have to physically turn around and go back in your house to check you unplugged everything, that's 1 point. spiraling about climate change or politics or the state of the world is a free space, that's basically every evening.

you worry you're being selfish and not a good person because how come you're worried about your dog's health and the itch in your eye when you know people who are really very ill or who have it worse or who are genuinely struggling. then you worry that you're being annoying by infantilizing them. then you worry that your priorities are wrong, that you should be infinitely more worried about the state of a dying planet.

you wanted to be a person, is all. you wanted to go through life in a softness, to hold the world gently and have it whisper past you. and instead you are a worrier. everything that touches you is hard and raw and sharp like diamonds.

Don't make me find pleasure in the little things

Yes, I almost cried feeling cold air on my face in the morning

It made me so happy when I bought three different spices for my tea yesterday.

But please, don't make me find pleasure in the little things. I need those adventures.

I need love, and life. I need big moments with dresses on fire. I need to know that life is big magic, too. I need real tears of joy and explosions.

I know, you're talking of awe. But it feels like you're extending an aiding hand to stroke my hair.

To make a pastel colour not look so muted.

I want it all

I want the princess blue and the nutcracker red

Is that okay? I'd take both, thank you. Here's the change.

"It doesn't have to be like this. We could have it so much better"

Calligraffiti in Chicago, Illinois

crystal lupa, "horse of candlelight & grass of nightingale," 2023, oil and gold foil on linen