An Ode To 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' By David Gate

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

remedy by Bob Hicok

bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.

“a community without romance risks being brutish and crass, superficial and brittle, cruel and even muderous. . . i don’t mean just romantic romance. i don’t just mean erotic romance. . . i mean the romance that allows us to soften our voices when we see each other.”

maya angelou, 1998

it’s kinda fucked up that you’re only an age for a year. I didn’t know how to be 23 yet, let me try again

“I knew I did from the first moment we met. It was not love at first sight exactly, but familiarity. Like: oh, hello, its you. Its going to be you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

Adonis, from Selected Poems, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, Singular in a Plural Form

“I didn’t yearn for anything but privacy, because it is an embarrassment to be a wound in public.”

— Billy-Ray Belcourt, from A History of My Brief Body

Look at you, Wiping your own tears With the same hands That long to be held

Ayesha Zahra