Rainy Day In Kyoto

asking for help at work feels like being stabbed 400 times then getting run over by three trucks and shot like one thousand times

america has a functioning democracy where one party tries to kill you and the only other party just campaigns around the fact that they aren’t the party that tries to kill you

Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

to the version of myself who got me this far,

you weren't supposed to die this way. despite the circumstances in which you had to go, i wanted to let you go with grace, for you gave me what i needed, when i needed it the most.

you didn't deserve the pain they put you through, or the pain i put you through. you deserved to receive the same love that you brought to other people.

at first i wanted to save you, i wanted to retrieve the memory of what it was like to be you. at least hold on a little bit longer. i didn't want to let you go, but i had to.

i take the goodness you left, and i carry it with me in my new shell. just know, i won't ever forget what you had to go through to become me.

Illustrations for Yasunari Kawabata's The Sound of Waves | Shiosai | 潮騒, by Lâm Tùng Nguyễn.

It’s annoying but the way you improve yourself is one tiny thing at a time

𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔰 🍵

i'm not going to lie. i would do this all the time

Ariana Papademetropoulos (Greek-American, b. 1990)

Celestial Penance, 2024

oil on canvas