( me / via )

"Talismans have power here: overseeing the room is a tiny statue of a silver owl, which rests on a bookshelf alongside a plastic T. rex and a painted tin Virgin of Guadalupe."

Even Jonathan Swift is not up to this moment.

White Phosphorus.

"Junonia

Plucking a fossil from the pebbly shore
of Howth Beach, I dragged my thumb across
the shell’s creamy basecoat and ganache
specks circumnavigating its body whorl;
I twiddled the spire, heard the sea’s posh
accent as it spoke through the aperture.
It said nothing I didn’t already know.
I brought it home for no reason except
to display its mildly pleasant uselessness."

--Chloe Cook in The New Criterion

At Night the States.