Life doesn’t have a roadmap, so why should this story?

Appreciation may be the antidote for existential regret, but there’s no reason one cannot appreciate what one has and yet hope for more.

It’s the middle of August as it is, a week from my birthday, the season of the sun and the season of fire. Plants are a part of that, and that first tomato will be as much an affirmation of life and of summer as that rising sun.

I remembered how good it felt, thinking that life was a game we could play, and somehow win. It scared me. It still does.

Sharing writing is scary! Nothing helps.

Now I have that photo. I can see myself, smiling like that, waking up the next day, and doing it again.

I’m actually looking forward to something outside of the regular day to day: Trips, and friends, and watching the world speed by from the windows of a train.

We’re still trying for this, right?

Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire teaches us that here is no safe world behind the flowers, no protection from the light of the sun, and only rarely beauty behind the flowing lines of poetry.

In which Justin X. M. Corriss reflects on that other great reason to write. Because it’s fun, right?