Salad and cereal for dinner

September is coming to a close and autumn has landed

Hi folks, happy Sunday! I think Sunday is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite day of the week. It’s usually pretty calm, which I love, but I find the tranquility comes with a lot of anxiety and time stuck in my own head. (I just realized that I’ve never had an original thought, this is quite literally the definition of the Sunday scaries). This means that since I usually write the “essay” part of this newsletter the day of, it usually turns out just a bit sad. Today, I am feeling very sleepy due to a late night, and thought I’d just jump into the rest of the newsletter without writing much, because I think it would turn into rambling about not very much, which is fun when I have the energy, but energy is currently running low. I hope you enjoy the rest of this week’s accolades!

Slipping

I will give a toast in dappled light, one of the ones talking about how I’ve never seen two people

who compliment one another like brie cheese and raspberries and I 

I don’t drink and I mark my empty glass with red shine in hopes that it’ll create some illusion

that I’ve drank every sip of wine too quickly as you slip, slip, slip through your freshly cut hair

freshly cut flowers from my parents’ backyard where we celebrated our birthdays, where we made a mockery of our enemies and bled salt and blue.

I don’t bring him, even though you told me I could, we’ve only kissed three times and I know I will leave when things get good, I know I’ll run because we both burn easy so I’ll

I’ll come alone and I’ll sit with her and her children who feel like my own and I’ll dance with them and spin them in windy circles and stain their cheeks because they will never know this little again and they will never be wiser. They will never dance without looking over their shoulders

They won’t be carried out of the car and covered in blankets after they fall asleep and they won’t walk without turning and they won’t run without becoming her fear or love without believing

they will always be 

the fiercer lover, the strong one, the bull beneath the fighter.

When you drive away at the end of the night, the two of you glimmering and changed into your shorter dress, the one you were most excited about, the one we found together at the estate sale down the street and tried on in the kitchen 

I wave and you wave and blow me a kiss and you’re blissful, the termites eating away at our homes and our hands and our heads stop momentarily, knowing you’d prefer butterflies on your back and a ladybug on your arm and we’re side by side even as he speeds away, I know, I know, you will not slip

and we’ll stay and I hold her child’s hand and hug her mother

We go to the backyard and clean up forks and half empty cups and hug your mother goodbye, she’s crying a little while the sun is setting and we are back to familiarity

I remind her that you will come back, but mostly I’m reminding myself

dishes sinking debris floating ocean rushing home, trying to catch us

By now, I know 

the sea and the shore are never apart for long

5 things I have been loving and appreciating lately!

The Bear

I finished this show over a month ago, and I still think about it all of the time. The actors were so so incredible, I love Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri with all my heart. Also, the show has so many Wilco songs on the soundtrack, probably because the show is set in Chicago (the band is from Chicago as well). I felt such second-hand stress the entire time I was watching it but it also made my heart happy. Seeing Richie sing Taylor Swift at the end of the show and slowly let go of his slightly toxic masculinity is also a plot point that is very overlooked, in my opinion at least. Everyone should watch this show when they get a chance!

Jeremy & Ayo

Bluest Nude: Poems by Ama Codjoe

I’m reading this for a class right now, and Codjoe is quickly becoming one of my favorite poets. Her poems are such beautiful, metaphorical presentations of femininity and sexuality, and the speaker takes on so many different roles. The protagonist, the antagonist, the speaker, the subject. The imagery is some of the best I’ve ever read, and I believe this is Ama’s first collection of poetry, so I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Beekeeping

I hung out with bees for the first time this week! Beekeeping is such a fascinating art, and I’m hoping to get into it and learn more about the bees and how to take care of them. They work so hard all the time, and they’re becoming my role models. Go bees!

Unconventional dinners

As a disbeliever in the “girl dinner” trend, I prefer this term. The dining hall at our school has some pretty questionable options sometimes, and there’s always only choices. However, there is always bread, a pretty solid salad bar, cereal, and usually rice. All of these options are pretty basic, but when combined, you can come up with some ingenious meals. The picture I’m inserting is not a great example of this, but it was quite good.

Win for cereal and salad

Documenting simple things

Today’s bug… bees (predictable)! I could write a whole Substack about bees, and I probably will once I learn more about them, but for now I’ll just focus on one thing. The hexagon shape that bees use to store their honey (honeycomb) is proven to be the most efficient storage shape in the world! The pattern lets each hexagonal cell to be filled up with no space in between them, allowing for maximum honey storage. Even though the wax that the hexagons are made of is fairly thin, it is strong and can hold a lot of weight. We underestimate their little brains all the time.

That’s a wrap on today’s newsletter! As always, there will be a link to share this newsletter below, and to subscribe. Free subscriptions and paid subscriptions are both so appreciated, and I also love hearing from you all. It is sometimes exhausting to keep this up, but your kind words keep me going (oh and also I really do love it). Have a beautiful week. Love ya!

Cheers,