( via / via )

"But the moral injury feels less acute."

" 'You’re like our Katniss!' No the fuck I am not, the book is about class struggles and set in Appalachia. I was literally born into the aristocracy😭" --@thevivllainous.bsky.social

Treatise of the Three Impostors.

"AND THE CITY STOOD IN ITS BRIGHTNESS

And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned.
And life was running out, Ruteboeuf's or Villon's.
Descendants, already born, were dancing their dances.
Women looked in their mirrors made from a new metal.
What was it all for if I cannot speak.
She stood above me, heavy, like the earth on its axis.
My ashes were laid in a can under the bistro counter.

And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned
To my home in the display-case of a granite museum,
Beside eyelash mascara, alabaster vials,
And menstruation girdles of an Egyptian princess.
There was only a sun forged out of gold plate,
On darkening parquetry the creak of unhurried steps.

And the city stood in its brighntess when years later I returned,
My face covered with a coat though now no one was left
Of those who could have remembered my debts never paid,
My shames not forever, base deeds to be forgiven.
And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned."

--Czeslaw Milosz, Selected Poems (tr by CM & Peter Dale Scott, 1980)

Dead Names, Dead Dogs.