Everything is post these days, as if we're all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own. - Margaret Atwood

Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity. I have had ample experience with both.

we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

Me, it’s the heart:
that’s the part lacking.
I used to want one:
a dainty cushion of red silk
dangling from a blood ribbon,
fit for sticking pins in.
But I’ve changed my mind.
Hearts hurt. — Margaret Atwood, from “The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ,” Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)