Dear Diary: I said “Deleuze is bae,” and they frowned. So then I said “Pamille Caglia,” and they smiled.
***
If you profess your love to the hag of the swamp and the hag reciprocates, the hag is not making it permissible for your heart to beat as one with hers, as might be done by the fair damsel or even the well-meaning wench. The hag is conducting a lesson in the variations of love’s meaning between beings corporeal and phantasmal. Alas, the equality between the two might not be what you had hoped. You will obey the swamp hag’s love language, but you will never speak it.
***
Dear Diary: A teen pointed at me and said I was “Dead ass” followed by something in an unknown language. Now there is a skeleton outside my window. And skeletons on all the dating app profiles. Also I am a skeleton. Teens are so rude.
***
When you survey the state of your life, spending Saturday night watching five movies straight and making consistent progress on a $13 12-pack, you think yourself a modern-day Caligula. Yes, Caligula would live this way if he were alive in 2021 AD and not 21 AD. Caligula would wear high-top Chuck Taylors holding onto dear life with duct tape. Caligula would drive a ’94 Subaru. Caligula would have a Bumble account. Caligula would do data entry.
***
Dear Diary: Told my parents about my new all-skeletal lifestyle. Dad says he thinks what happened to me was a “brother moment.” Mom will commit as much birthday money as needed to “psychic warriors.” They both blocked me on Snapchat and Snapchat only.
***
A wise man came down from the mountain proclaiming that he’d invented a new emotion. Yet the emotion proved appealing among the people, and spread so far and wide that his authorship was all but obliterated. The wise man returned back up the mountain to create a new emotion to process this outcome. Keep your emotions to yourselves.
***
Dear Diary: A small but manageably majestic husky barked at me. Felt freaked out and unsafe all through lunch. Ate snacks (alternating Funyuns, Sour Patch Kids) in hopes of soothing. Relief was minimal :-(. Why does this always happen to ME?
***
“Repression, actually, is good,” a man said in the town square to no one in particular. The next day, he burst into flames. Rumors spread among the townspeople that he spontaneously combusted (because repression), but the coroner’s report made clear that he became inflamed as he waded in his backyard kiddie pool, drinking beer and smoking while listening to Kate Bush, having confused gasoline for water. Could’ve happened to anybody, the townspeople agreed.
