The Devil Takes You Home

You know, because sometimes God is your copilot, but it’s the Devil who takes you home.

When you see some racist shit going down, you speak the fuck up. Your words will mean something…and so will your silence.

There is something unsettling about how we’re given life and then spend a large part of it trying to engineer better ways of killing others.

a silent ally isn’t a thing.

The past is the present trapped in a perpetual echo. The present is just an amalgamation of everything that preceded it, molded together with memory. The future is the floating unknown that shifts between nothing and possibility, between death and new beginnings, between uncertainty and hope. We are the knowing, insignificant fragments of flesh trapped in the space between all three, aware that every sentence we start is made up of a silent half waiting in the future and whatever we just said already an irretrievable chunk of the past.

Life is what happens between the things we think we know and the things we learn about too late to do anything about it.

Men often complain about women because they know how to hurt us with words. We do the same. I think the only reason we complain about women is because they do it better.

That what happens in la frontera is so problematic is shocking. Viewed from the border itself, the conflict is not between two countries; it’s an argument between neighbors that occupy the same land but don’t share the same privileges, and it’s an argument often policed by people who don’t even live anywhere near that neighborhood.

The thing about humanity is that it’s always worse than the worst you can imagine.

When you have an accent, people often think you possess the intellect of a fence post.

The worst part of saying you no longer believe in God is knowing that God is still there, listening to you. That's why the praying sneaks back in when shit goes south. That's why not believing is just standing on the opposite side of the same room you've always been in.

What people with money don’t understand is that most poor people’s problems can be solved with money. There are problems that won’t go away no matter how many bills you throw at them, but for people like me, for folks whose nightmares have names like hunger and eviction, money is a wonderful thing that can make tribulations disappear in a matter of seconds.

If you’re Black or brown, the value of your life is less than the fragile masculinity of a cop who wants to feel superior or a racist who wants you out of the way so they’re not forced to face someone they don’t understand.

Being broke is not a financial status; it’s a state of mind.

The connective tissue between large Texas cities is brown nothingness. Buildings sprout from the flat ground in the distance when you get close enough to a city, their tallest structures reaching up to the sky like the blocky dark fingers of some buried giant from an alien race, but before you get there, the only thing around you is dirt, a few weathered shrubs, and an endless blue sky that sometimes makes you think it’s close enough to shatter if you throw a big rock at it. It’s like whichever deity was in charge of the terrain just gave up and copied and pasted the same mile over and over again all the way along I-10.

You can wrap a shotgun in flowers, but that doesn’t make the blast less lethal.

I don't know what makes us want to keep on living, what makes us desperately hold on to anything that will allow us to remain on this earth just a little longer despite the pain that comes with it, but I do know that, whatever it is, selfishness resides at its core; selfishness is its black, dangerous heart.

Ignorance is dangerous, but knowing takes time and effort, and that's something many of us don't have.

Power's a strange thing. Some have it and some don't. Those who do have a certain way of speaking that renders options nonexistent.

There are things in this world that have no explanation. When you come across these things, you have two options. Option one is to try to make things make sense. This is what most people do. They experience something and they try to mold the event to their experiences, to understand what happened using the filter of what they already know. This never works. It only leads to confusion and frustration, yes? The second option is to accept that strange things happen, that the impossible sometimes is real. When you accept it, you can move on with your life. Our ancestors invented gods for this reason and they were happier because of it.

Your words will mean something... and so will your silence.

The soul of this country lives in the gap-toothed smiles of gas station cashiers, the matted fur of small-town dogs, the buzzing of neon signs in small dives where a layer of dust covers every surface, the shattered spirit of drive-through employees in nowhere towns, the weird smells and carpet stains in cheap motels where the windows look out at empty parking lots.

The love we can show two people can be immense and yet incredibly different.

I missed a collection of moments, of movements, of body parts and gestures, of things she did and said. I had no idea if the sum of that was that I missed her as a whole, missed her as a person, but I craved the parts that made her who she was.

Women are pillars. The only thing that changes is what or whom they hold up.

If a gun embodies everything that's wrong with humanity, the internet is a festering mirror that shows us what happens when humanity has been completely lost.

Bullets don't believe in remakes or second chances.

You don't know horror until you've spent a few hours inside a hospital looking at the fitful sleep of a loved one who is being taken from you. You don't know desperation until the uselessness of praying hits you.