My first love

My first love was silence.
I built myself from scratch
and no one listened.
This was the best time of my life.
I used to carry the clothes
to the laundry room
and pray for all the fog
in the world to surround me.
I’d let my thoughts
catch rides
with passing airplanes.
All that womanhood
caught in the roof
of my mouth
was like honey.
I knew it would never
go bad
so I never said a word
about it.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

things that really happened

Who says what is news and what is not? Who controls the news? Why is a story true if it’s printed, but only a rumour if it’s spread verbally in the air? Why do people want to read about things they already know, but not about things that are new and vital and important? Why do people want to look at pictures of malformed vegetables? Why do people want to read a story if it’s got their name in it? At what point does a reporter, or an editor, get personally involved in a story? What is the difference between reporting and recording? Why do people want to read the stories made up in a cellar by a salesman rather than things that really happened? Why and how can a lie run faster around the world before truth can get its boots on? Why are many of the words used in newspaper stories never used in real speech in real life?

Kate Macdonald
Newspapers, lies, magic and responsibility: Terry Pratchett and The Truth

put this together

There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this together with my human life, my intellectual life, my solitude, my transcendence, my brains, and my fearful, fearful ambition? …You can’t unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and anti-matter…

Joanna Russ
The Female Man

have to choose

There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.

Ursula Le Guin
The Dispossessed