#when you died

[radiowhiskers]

"There, there, Husker... I'll never leave you..."

(And Husk doesn't bother to say: But you already have.)

[punkrockmixtapes]

The Menzingers - "When You Died" (Full Album Stream)

[whisperthatruns]

My mother fills an empty can of soup with water and swirls it, until each speck of oil catches. How beautiful, this twinkling tin. I have always loved what most people throw away: broccoli stems, fish heads, the white of green onions and its dangling foot like an anemone, the rat tail of a radish. I dream of boiling the salty shells of pistachios. Of gorging myself with compost, slick with nutrients.

Jane Wong, from “When You Died,” How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Books, 2021)

[pokelemony]

au where whenever danny transforms back to human he somehow gets the hazmat suit he died in, it doesn't matter what clothes he's wearing before going ghost, when he changes back he's in the hazmat suit

this will obviously ruin his reputation more than ever, people think he's following his parents footsteps, his parents are estatic to see him in the suit

maybe he carries around some big clothes to throw on top of hazmat suit, maybe sam can make it look fashionable lmfao

[lifeinpoetry]

Tell me then: what is the use of making sense during a time

like this, during a red sky like that, dangling about like a tender

slice of meat you want to devour?

— Jane Wong, from “When You Died,” published in Bennington Review

[whisperthatruns]

When You Died

I went to the library to find you. I stained a book on Maoist-era politics. With the tomato soup I had microwaved earlier. And it crusted the page like a ridge. In the Grand Canyon or the surface of Mars in love. Or an army uniform cratered. In the blood of others. I am sorry. I do not know which analogy. To use, what to say to the fact of it all. 36 million deaths from 1958 to 1962. Estimated. What no one talks. About, called “epidemic,” not starvation. At my grandmother’s grave in Jersey, the ground. Was as soft as a perfectly poached egg. And I almost plunged my arms into the soil. To touch her---her purple jade bracelet shining. Like the ring of an undiscovered planet. Or a truant yam among all this empty clay. All. This empty. I am sorry to give you. That hope. I did not plunge my arms into the earth. I held these Safeway flowers, dipped in bleach and blue. These wrinkled petal faces, drifting in gasoline. Air. This yawning gap between us all. The more things change, what remains the same?

Jane Wong, from “When You Died,” How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Books, 2021)

[punkrockmixtapes]

Frank Watkinson - When You Died (Menzingers)

I was not expecting to like this as much as I do. So good.

[starsalvation]

—Jane Wong, When You Died