“You are the perfect girl,” he said against my lips. “You’re hot, but you hate to shop. That dress is gonna look great. On my floor.”

Ursaless, the Queen of the Bears, had said it straight: 'Sometimes I recall oddments without even trying.'
Who knows when memory, unbidden, will burst out and take hostages?
...The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance: some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

Next year, I’m going to be conscious, intentional, and critical about the books I choose to buy and read. Because I like measurable goals (and because I think vague “try harder” goals are fairly worthless for me), I’m going to ensure that at least 50% of the books I read next year are written by POC. And I’m going to talk about those books, to rate and review them, to share them with others. …

It is important to learn about and talk about the wider systemic, institutional problems with racism in publishing and society in general. But I cannot be an ally without examining how my own personal choices are reinforcing the oppression I profess to oppose, and then changing those behaviors