The worse thing what could happen is they can say no. If you never ask, you are doing it to yourself. The worse thing.

Your desires are more powerful than your opinions.

Economics of Attention

Is it wrong to charge your vibrator

off your company's laptop? 

No one will know—

if it's stalking when you post it 

all public online. 

Is any of this incognito anymore—

when you've been begging to be seen?

But the comments section

is bound to take off,

and you'll be popular

for a minute to no one special—

internet strangers who'll forget

by next week.

don't offer me a wish cause I'll waste it on sumthin stupid like 'couches are machine washable'

D. All the Above

Today I realized

the beginning of my heart line

on both palms

has shifted toward the index finger.

Like the beginning of love

is pointing at me.

Middle school me would know

exactly what this means,

and could detail why

the lines on my hands are moving

right along with me,

and the lines on my forehead

I think I should cover up

with cheeky, slutty, cute bangs.

Yet, my middle school self

worried about finding

a signature scent,

while I know it's just

whichever one you wear the most—

spraying the bottle

pointed at my heart

so often it's worn

a stretching, longer line,

toward my index finger,

pointing in the mirror,

saying shit like,

"I can't fucking wait

to be forty."

everything i HAVE to do—im gonna do in the most enjoyable, possible way for me.

it gets so much easier once you start to see results.

La-Z-Boy

Would you ride out a hurricane

With me, hand in hand,

In side-by-side recliner chairs,

Like that elderly couple

Who was on the evening news?

Of course you would.

You already have—

Figuratively, literally,

You've been right there with me,

Weathering the storm,

Footrests up, kicked back,

'Cause if this is death,

We ought to greet it in comfort.

An Inventory of Things That Might Mean Nothing

I don't want to be the type of person who can only be inspired when I'm sad, hurt, or angry. I'd like to feel that same fire when things are good, calm, or when I'm just riding the waves. You know, where I am right now.

It's not always easy to ride the wave and not care what shore it washes up on. Matter of fact, I'm failing. Maybe not failing. Struggling. Fighting. Trying to just ride and not care where it ends up.

It's stupid little things.

Like, I made a big step. A big step for me, at least.

I texted someone from the neighborhood.

Met up with her for ice cream.

Talked too much. Mostly about me.

I needed it, though. No regrets. YOLO, right?

I needed to talk, and talk I did, I guess. We talked about her too. She even gave me a book—an extra copy she had of one she thought I'd like.

And I was bolder. She texted me afterward, and I sent her my Instagram. You know, in case she wanted to follow me. I don't add people. Not often. I'm not exactly a private-private person. That would, in my opinion, be someone without social media. But I am selective. Guarded. About who gets access, and even about what I share.

She requested to follow me. I approved.

So, of course, I requested to follow her back.

She didn't approve my follow request.

It felt like a breach of the social contract. 

I approve you, you approve me. 

We're sharing together.

Maybe not.

Maybe she looked through my pictures.

Saw the stupid collages I make.

The flowers from the backyard.

A couple of shots of the cats.

Decided she'd seen enough.

Or maybe she just forgot.

Maybe she just didn't open the app after she requested. 
Doesn't even know I approved.

I keep flipping to the same greyed out "Requested" button. 

The 134 followers (I'm one of them) 

and the 274 following (of which I am not a member.)

And the 210 posts not for me.

I made myself visible, and I don't know what happened next.

Last night, I couldn't sleep. That was abnormal for me. Hours awake.

This morning I texted her: "Thank you for listening. I didn't realize how much I needed to talk. I'm excited for the book."

Still no answer.

No follow approval either.

God.

I'm becoming something I don't like.

Overthinking stupid little things.

Like—

I'd asked her what she did for pet care when she goes on vacation. She takes the dogs with her. Unhelpful. She gave lots of suggestions. None of them were really a good fit. To be frank, I already had a Plan B. I was just hoping she had a better option.

She didn't.

She said the woman one house over does house-sitting.

Ugh.

No.

Don't mix business with the neighborhood.

After all, if it goes badly, we have to live one house over.

But even if it doesn't go badly, we'd be inviting someone from the neighborhood into our home. To see our daily schedule. Entrusting them with our lives. The dirt. The smells. The leftovers in the back of the fridge.

What's to stop them from walking around the block, pointing at the house I've grown to hate, and saying, "You should hear these crazy people's pet-care instructions," while pulling out the five-page document I spent hours typing, reading, updating, rereading, editing, and printing?

I guess there's some world, some alternate universe, some Sliding Doors moment where I wouldn't care.

I'm moving anyway.

Fuck all these bitches.

I'm getting out of here.

But the wave.

I'm riding it.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. A move can seem imminent and still take another couple of years.

Forever might just be a couple of months.

We don't know a thing.

Not really.

Nothing's a done deal till it's done.

Thanks for the book.

I've been listening to positive affirmations. 

One of them says, "Everyone feels insecure sometimes. It's normal."

But I need a house-sitter so we can go look at houses in another state. And this girl, over Twix Chunk ice cream in a cone, looked me in the eye and said, "Selfishly, I have to ask... do you have to move?"

I thought for a moment...

Maybe not.

As I ate my raspberry and green apple sorbet.

And I thought maybe these people aren't that bad.

And maybe we've just been too guarded.

I should connect with her on Instagram.

And maybe she's just busy.

Maybe she isn't on the 'gram like I am.

I don't fucking know.

I don't know anything.

And that's not a poor me, poor me, I don't know shit kind of thing.

It's just the God's honest truth.

I have no clue which way my life is going, and I'm trying to go with the flow.

She probably felt insecure too. About this loud girl who talked so much about herself and poo-pooed all her ideas.

(But for real—boarding two dogs and four cats before just finding another sitter on Rover? Come on.)

And my horoscope says:

"The lessons embedded in your current circumstances might be most accessible when you approach them with genuine curiosity rather than a desire to move past them quickly."

Okay.

I've been curious. I've been patient. I've been like, Ooooh, what's the lesson? What's the little prize at the bottom of this Raisin Bran box?

I've been like that for months, it seems.

Yet all I keep finding is that I am all the things I tell other people not to be.

Oh, don't overthink it.

Don't make it a big deal.

My own voice, sour fucking cold sorbet in my mouth on a hot day.

And those walls I built up—the ones that felt like good boundaries, the ones that kept me from being vulnerable and getting hurt—were just ways to pretend, for years, that I'm not insecure as fuck.

How long do I wait to start this fucking book?

Sleep

Sleep,

belly exposed,

and I'll hold

your foot,

because I need

a pill to sleep,

a machine to wake up,

and anything, anything,

anything out there

to hold on to.

unsocial media

Have you ever thought someone was waving at you, only to realize, after you wave back, that their intended audience was someone behind you?

That's kind of what social media has been feeling like lately.

At the beginning of the month, I made the goal to "decenter social media." I wasn't exactly sure what I meant by that. I just knew I'd already started.

Now these digital spaces, where I used to waste so much time, seem so unwelcoming. So unsocial.

It's all advertisements. If not for a product, then for a person—an influencer. I opened Instagram, and it immediately recommended a reel of a 24-year-old homeless woman cooking on a single burner in a tent behind a Walmart. The video had the polished treatment of a chef influencer. She held up the packages, said how much everything cost, gave step-by-step instructions, as though this were all perfectly normal for us to watch.

Of course, there are the people I know... but do I?

A former student posts a story. I know she got married. I know she lives in California now. I know she has a baby. Yet she never told me any of these things. Not mano a mano. Not woman to woman. Not really. I learned them passively, as she posted for her parents, her in-laws, her friends—for everyone keeping up with her life.

A wave that I saw before its intended beloved.

My mistake. I'm embarrassed. Carry on with your day.

And even the people I do talk to regularly—I don't know that I need to see your six photos from June. And I'm especially tired of the daily reshares of posts you didn't even create. What is this? Surely it's something with broad enough appeal that it already got two thousand likes somewhere else. But it's not just the regurgitating Möbius strip of information.

It's not even, "Oh, I'm ignoring my life to peek into yours."

It used to be fun. Like being a fly on the wall, peering through windows. *My God, that's how they live!*

Now I'm not sure anyone is really living there.

The moment your child is born. The concert finally starts. The anniversary dinner arrives. Before the feeling has settled into your body, there's the instinct to capture it, crop it, caption it, and send it out into the feed.

Then it's wedged between a homeless woman performing resilience for the algorithm and an ad for a viral dress you'll supposedly wear every day—60% off, today only, if you buy seven.

And somewhere in that endless scroll, I mistake another broadcast for a conversation. Another performance for a person. Another wave that wasn't meant for me.

Maybe that's what I meant by decentering social media.

Not spending less time online.

Just finally realizing no one was waving at me.

Don't put off getting better.

 That's the girl I was and the girl I'll never be again.

Dumb Hot Bitch

I don't wanna make choices
anymore—I just want to bat
my bimbo Bambi eyes, pout,
and be dumb enough to like
anything offered. A total brat.

Show me the smallest tasks,
then talk slower till you give up—
good thing I'm so pretty.

I'll agree:
push-up bra
and short skirt.
Then tell me a lie;
I'll believe you every time.

Yes, I'm so happy—

        'cause you're so funny,

                   and I'm so very dumb.

'Cause I am so young, dumb,
and pretty—
just like we all want.

Sexy Summer

I want you obsessed with me—

addicted to the sound of my voice
and the smell of my hair.

Not just you—everyone.

Both bad boys and good girls,
crawling on their knees,
ready to drink me in—

Dripping syrup like a root beer
sucked through a straw—

while I sprinkle breadcrumbs,
real Hansel and Gretel style.

Freestyle.

Pinch a petal,
a pinch of ground beef.

Eat raw meat like
our ancestors once did.

Lie in moldy, goldy grass,
rank enough to draw flies,
dank as the spores
in our bellies.

Be held until midnight,
and fuck like that
sometimes—

glass to ass,
cool and smooth,
subtle like that.

'Cause I may not know
an honest day's work,
but I know what I like.

Subterfuge

I like smelling like patchouli

and rotting fruit, so sweet

it makes you sick.

And I want you to place

your face in my palm,

let your head drop heavy.

I've been trying to heal,

pussy forward and up,

and it's not working.

So skin to skin tonight,

hand in hand, fingers locked.

Pull this knot to your heart,

and let me listen once again,

like you really meant it when you said:

Time can heal all.

Nicotine Dream

My fictional internet boyfriend
rewired my brain,
and now I'm okay.

Which begs the question:

What the fuck is still wrong with you?

I could be a stoner babe in Florida—
smoking in the A/C.
Or go to the Midwest,
try to recreate a past
that's been dead.
Or go full red-pill housewife—
an honest thought, sometimes.

When I've got future on future
on deck, and time to fiddle it out—

so what the fuck you
worryin' 'bout?

an indignation

complicit silence

throat chakra

I had a reiki session, and she said my throat chakra was super blocked. Two weeks later, at another session, she said, "Your throat chakra isn't nearly as blocked as before, but it built up again in a short time. What aren't you voicing?"

It was evening when it happened. Ever so subtle and slight, the shift, when he said, "It's going to start getting darker," and took a long drink from the cup in his hand and peered inquisitively at the sky.

But the summer equinox was two weeks ago. It had already begun getting darker. Maybe he hadn't noticed. I didn't feel it, just knew it from the calendar. But notice or not, there is still a minute less of light each day. The shrinking of the sun. Little by little, chipping away, and the darkness taking over again.

For a moment, I thought about correcting him. Thought about saying, "It already has!" Started rambling about how it had started two weeks ago and he was late. But I didn't.

It's not that I censor myself, but I don't voice everything I think. But really, what is the point of reminding someone it's been getting darker even longer? That it's only going to get dimmer and dimmer, when we'll circle back and it will all be sunshine and fresh watermelon and summertime again next year?

The seasons will turn and change, and it will be dark and light and dark and light, and I will be different in some ways and the same in others. Whether I said anything or not, the days would shorten either way. Eventually, growing long again.

The Bloodletting

        Historically, marketing emphasized the material qualities of a product—its specifications, functions, and practical benefits. Over time, however, advertising evolved toward the production of symbolic value, positioning commodities not merely as useful objects but as vehicles through which consumers might perform identity, autonomy, status, and self-actualization. The emergence of targeted advertising represents a further epistemological shift in the relationship between commerce and subjectivity. Rather than simply responding to preexisting desires, algorithmic advertising increasingly identifies, cultivates, and monetizes latent insecurities, rendering the individual both consumer and product within an ever-expanding digital marketplace of self-optimization. This essay seeks to interrogate the implications of this paradigm while situating the contemporary body as a contested site of neoliberal commodification.

Just kidding. 

I have been getting a lot of ads targeting my breast shape lately, and I'm unsure how "they" even know this information about me.

"They."

Who are they?

Big shrug.

Big money.

The Man.

They know far more about me than I know about them.

I have big ol' floppy tits. As my mother had before me, and her mother before her. And probably all the way back to my ancestors in Germany, hauling kegs of beer around a tavern—or so I imagine them.

Yet the internet knows this about me.

I looked at my photos on Instagram. They couldn't possibly have figured this out from my pictures. I generally point the camera at my face. I have never Googled my breast shape.

Why there are loads of breasts in this world. There are flatty-flats and roundy-rounds and perky-perks and lopsy-sides. A million kinds of tits for a million kinds of women, and they are all pretty. 

Including mine. 

And apparently the internet knows exactly what they look like.

Well, thanks to targeted ads, I have been informed that I have "teardrop boobs."

Until last week, I had never heard of this. But now, thank you, marketing executives, I know that "teardrop boobs" are not only what these—imagine I'm motioning to my chest—are called, but that they are apparently a terrible condition which can and should be addressed.

What I find most troubling about this recent influx of "fix your shit tits" ads is that last month, I took a few minutes each day to rub lotion lovingly onto my chest and, in my head, tell my breasts that they are beautiful and wonderful and that I love them.

Do you think my phone was listening to all that?

Listening to my daily tit affirmations?

Did they think I was like a little kid whispering to myself, "It's okay," because she felt ashamed—and not because I actually like the big ol' floppy flops of my matriarchal lineage?

Because now it is shoveling five kinds of bras, a chest binder, breast reduction surgery, breast lift surgery, a supplement to "drain toxins from the lymph nodes in breast tissue" made from some sort of deep-sea algae, and a dress that lifts the tits.

Oh, free consultation!

Fifteen percent off when you sign up for the newsletter!

Decreased sagging in just two weeks!

Never feel ashamed of your sad, sad teardrop boobs again!

So sad they're even called teardrops.

Aren't you crying yet, girlie?

Not yet, bruh.

The other day, I was in the bath, my floppies just floating and flopping, as they do, in the water. Swaying sweetly with the motion of the warm water. And they weren't teardrops at all. They were round little buoys, bouncing and playing like dolphins in the ocean. It was delightful. Press them down and they'd bob back up to the surface.

Hello! 

Hello!

Ahoy, matey!

Then I dried myself off and saw droplets of blood all over the tile floor. Then streaks of blood on my feet and calves. I leaned down to clean it up, and there was blood smeared all over my left breast—the slightly smaller one. I tried to clean it up and find the source, but as I did, it only seemed to get worse.

Finally, I found the tiny, minuscule nick on my thigh, just above my knee, from shaving.

How so much poured out of my body through such a small hole, I don't know.

But I dabbed a little toilet paper on it.

Stopped it up.

And as I cleaned the mess, I thought about how much of my DNA—those same little nucleotides that made my tits, and my mother's, and her mother's before her—was now still on the floor. 

Just traces, of course. 

Like a crime scene after the cleanup.

Just enough left behind to tell someone exactly who had been there.

Enough to break the whole case wide open.

Funny, isn't it?

How a detective can reconstruct a life from a drop of blood, while an algorithm seems determined to reconstruct an insecurity from a body.

I'm sure this week I'll get a billion ads for safety razors and creams and lotions and products to prevent nicks and get a closer, smoother shave. Maybe wax. Maybe Nair. Maybe some other product to address the terrible condition of growing hair like the ape I am instead of the mannequin I could become with enough money and enough time.

And you know what?

It didn't need fixing.

It never needed fixing.

Would Delight to be a Pillock

Childish

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

1 Corinthians 13:11

Social media is a funny thing.

See, I remember before it was really anything. Before Instagram, Facebook, even Myspace. Dare I admit, I remember before AIM? Because I do.

And those early versions were different. Unpolished, direct human-to-human transmissions, more often than not between people you knew. Not people you had met once, but people you knew. You know, knew offline.

No branding. No like and subscribe. It was a little like passing notes in the hallway between classes, but with photos and music and a few other flourishes, and a slightly wider audience.

Something weird happened when we went from “friends” to “followers.”

But anyway, my relationship with it has been off for a while, though I still felt fine standing on the slippery slope. I could still talk to a couple people I know! It wasn’t all bad. I could curate a feed. A feed. A feed bag.

And I didn’t get into the weird new Gen Z nonsense like TikTok or Snapchat. I tried for a minute, then gave up.

On Threads, there are so many elderly people commenting on AI porn-bot scammer accounts. And it’s all public. Like, posting their real phone numbers and addresses public.

There’s a Meemaw in Texas who thinks she is chatting with Elon Musk, and they are in love, and anyone can see it.

It makes me sad. And makes me wonder if that could be me someday. Older and clinging to some technology I don’t understand, while everyone else watches.

It has just devolved. Become a place I don’t know if I want to be.

So recently, I have been more and more into my actual life. I haven’t really cared what most other people are doing, especially people I don’t even know. And the more in my life I am, the more I like it.

It’s actually really nice.

And I don’t even want to share it.

Like, this is mine. This is my little scrap of life, and I’m going to enjoy every fucking minute of it, as me-sized and ordinary and holy as it is.

Did I outgrow social media or did it outgrow me?