Sonia Connolly

For Strong Women by Marge Piercy via musesfool. Posting it because it made me cry when it started talking about love, it rang so true for me. I had read it before, but I don't remember it landing the way it did today.

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

via musesfool
I love the mix of metaphorical and actual things to lose, jumping across stanzas.

To Pray To The Goddess Of Lost Things
by Barbara Jane Reyes

Help me to find my innocence. I may have dropped it
On the bus last week, when I also lost my cellphone,

And a notebook full of poems. I keep dropping things.
I forget where I've left things. People keep taking my shit

Without asking. Maybe I've forgotten what I've lent out.
I can't hold it together. I'm trying. I'm trying, so help me

To find my pride. Some punk ass bitch stole it from me,
I'm sure, when I was at the mall. I just turned around

For a second. I was looking for my mother. I was
Updating my Facebook. I was blindsided by something

That must have been important, I was shoulder bumped
By strangers, I was robbed. I searched all my pockets,

My skinny jeans in piles of laundry, my shopping bags,
My crumpled receipts, and it just wasn't anywhere.

Where is my dignity, where is my credit card, where are
My self-esteem, my perfect size-two body, my medication,

Where did I leave those? Where is my lipstick, my car keys,
Where is my one true love, my very own happily ever after.

Where is my voice. Every time I speak, some man, any man
Always interrupts, and every time I speak louder, he shouts.

He claims he knows far better than I, what I need, what's good
For me. Where is my fire to burn the filth from his tongue.

He wants me to fit in his pants pocket. Where are my knives.
Where is my backbone. Where is my wishbone. Help me

Find my voice, because some white woman keeps yapping
At me, as if I should drop everything. As if I must listen.

She says she speaks on my behalf. Do not believe her.
She says she's my friend and my sister. She's a dirty liar.

Where are my manners? I seem to have lost those too.
My mother taught me to say please. Please help me find her.

Where is my compass; this GPS keeps leading me away
From all that is clear and cool. Help me to locate my center.

Where are my manners? My mother taught me also,
To remember to breathe. And always, always give thanks.

Two lovely stories containing mutual support.

Saints Support Group and Coffee Hour by keita52 . A delightful modern-times AU for the Chalion Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. Contains kindness and a noisy cat.

Endless Roads to Travel, Endless Lives to Live by snacky . "Three adventures Polly Plummer never had, and two she gave to others." AU for Narnia after The Magician's Nephew.

(Dunno what happened to the little AO3 icon, but the usernames are correctly linking to AO3 profiles.)

Bonus video: Best of Favorite Dance Moves (2024) by Ed People. This amazing guy goes around learning dance moves from dancers of many nationalities. The dancers are good teachers, too. This one includes a snippet of a Serbian Kolo, amidst lots of other dances that look a lot more difficult to me. Full of joyful energy.

good bones by mumblemumble for sysann's fandomtree, for the prompt, "A ghost tries to communicate with the new inhabitant/s of their former home. Sadly nobody understands their cryptic messages. Your character is brought in to help." Seen via network. A delightful gentle story about figuring out what a ghost needs.

It's in the blood by Susan Kaye Quinn. An ultimately hopeful story about one way we could turn the corner and get out of this doom spiral.

Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land by Ruthanna Emrys, via forestofglory. I remembered linking to this before in 2020 but didn't realize I first read it in 2014!

The Lives of Lan Wangji by azurewaxwing, via forestofglory. It's a crossover between The Lives of Christopher Chant by Dianna Wynne Jones, and The Untamed. I'm not familiar with either one, but I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

At the Stopping Place by Grace Seybold, via mrissa's end of year short story list. A folk tale pattern from a different angle.

The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George, also via mrissa's list.

“Sure,” Gray says. “It’s strange. So? Who gives a shit? Lots of things are strange for a while, and then we get used to them—or else we stay limited and narrow and fucking sad.”

And a bonus link, related in that it's needed for a better world, You can't build love on lies by Girl on the Net. Note: the overall site is not at all work-safe, although the article is not related to sex work.

It’s not merely that the hurt from your lie will grow the longer it remains unsaid, it’s that all the love you built will collapse when it’s outed as well. The connection you’re maintaining with the person you’re lying to right now is constructed on shifting sand. Everything you pour into that relationship – whether romantic or friendly or collegial or whatever – is so much wasted bullshit. The love, care, friendship, compassion, understanding, affection and respect that person might feel for you… it’s all based on a lie! A false belief about who you are. If you are lying to your loved ones, then the love they give you back is just as fake as you are.

And because music makes everything better, forestofglory also recced "Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night" which is a line out of the beautiful Halsway Carol (video cued to start of singing) (lyrics).

22 short story recs from sophia_sol (for forestofglory), "female-focused stories from the last 5 years that are interested in human connection and/or material culture, and usually have a hopeful mood." The first one is Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer.

I went to a friend's band concert last night. The band members are deeply connected as well as amazing musicians, and it's always fun to watch them interacting as they time things just right and appreciate each other's solos. This time, my friend's 25 year old son sat in with them playing guitar. As they got into the first song, she looked over at him, radiating love and pride.

She kept smiling over her accordion as the song continued, joy spilling out of her. I thought a kid being someone's "pride and joy" just meant they were important, that they like them. I've never understood the full-body intensity of it.

For sure my parents never looked at me that way. Maybe sometimes I was a credit to the family, which means I made them look good. Mostly I was an inconvenience or a disappointment or a thing to be used or ignored.

I'm happy for the son. The whole family turned out, and I'm sure his brother and dad were beaming at him too. I wonder what it's like to grow up surrounded in love like that, like a fish in water. I wonder what it's like for my friend, co-creating and inhabiting such a loving family. As a friend, I receive and treasure some of that warmth.

The whole band is like that. The drummer gave the son a warm smile and an enthusiastic thumbs up after his guitar solo. Oh, so that's how people learn to like performing, when they're received like that.

Relatedly, mrissa posted her stories published this year, and On the Water Its Crystal Teeth was new to me, and just the right thing to read after last night's concert.

After We Kill Our Father and Before We Reach the Mainland by Max Franciscovich, via sophia_sol, who gave it ( a great rec ) I liked the way the writing gradually revealed the characters and the story, and that these three abused teens were still relating with care, and that the story mentions and acknowledges trauma without being traumatic to read.

Transits of Other Lands by Marissa Lingen, mrissa, who introduced it by saying( why she wrote it ) I liked the whimsy and the celebration of public transit while containing delightful snippets of story. It reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin's "Changing Planes."

When We Disappear by Emily Yu. I love the illustration, even if it doesn't match the image in my head. Another story about family relating in difficult circumstances, beautifully told. I wanted a different ending, though.

The Placeholder by Patricia Russo. A brief story about sources of support.

Shit Cassandra Saw That She Didn’t Tell the Trojans Because at that Point Fuck Them Anyway by Gwen E. Kirby. This is short and perfect.

A delightful story with delightful fox sketches! See the bottom of her post for instructions to get a pdf of the story complete with sketches emailed to you.

The McKinnock Hill Fox - a flash story by asakiyme.