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Podcasts and Tarot Reading Showed Me How to Be Real Instead of “Good”
It is not enough to be pretty. It is not enough to be obedient, or deferential, or useful. Being not a problem is not enough for a person to live on.
This is, a monthly column by Sarah Lyn Rogers on finding self and community in digital spaces.
Are You Afraid of the Dark
too much
This is how ugly you look when you are badwas
else
I could have prevented everything bad from happening if I just had more self-controlany presence at all
But could I trust that he did not, in some tiny part of him, also hate me a little? Wasn’t that just how people who loved me sometimes expressed it?
Dream Freedom Beautybenot beher
my own ideapretty
not a problem even smallerTell him it’s time to come in for dinnerTell him if he doesn’t come in right now, we’re all going to start without himYou didn’t hear this from me, but she said this terrible thing about himYou know how she gets.
be
Dream Freedom BeautyStarseed Survival GuideStarseed Survival Guide
Someone who finds your sadness and rage hilarious does not see you as a real person. You might be a sidekick or a secretary or a gold-star worker, but you are not a precious, tender, holy human being.
alway
Food 4 Thotwhobecausebecause becausebecause
uswe
Sarah Lyn Rogers is an NYC-based writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the editorial assistant for Soft Skull Press, a contributing editor for Catapult, and was formerly the fiction editor for The Rumpus. She is the author of Inevitable What (Sad Spell Press 2016), a poetry chapbook focused on magic and rituals, and was the 2014 winner of the Academy of American Poets' Virginia de Araujo prize.
For more of Sarah's work, visit sarahlynrogers.com.
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