DEAR DIARY

10.21/24.2024 Laura Kieler/after French

I deserve to be asked to remove my robe. I deserve to be told to remove my robe. I deserve to be ordered to put my feet here and here, to place my forearm -- no- no- there- yes, just there-- like that. Right there. And-- hold. I deserve to be approached - arranged - adjusted - commanded to curve my fingers - to extend my thumb - to cup my hand slightly so the knuckles show (it will make the hand look longer if the knuckles show). I deserve to have the tension in my wrist observed and aestheticized.

I deserve to have my name added to the museum label decades later by a bisexual intern passionate about highlighting silenced women and bringing their voices to the forefront. I deserve to hang across from Saint Sebastian, set in passive, if controversial, curatorial conversation. I deserve to be vandalized and then meticulously restored.

I deserve a second coffee. I deserve a third. I deserve a latte made with whole milk. When I sit in a café -- and I am sitting in a café now -- I deserve to have the jittery young man with the tapping foot fall in love with the idea of me, unable to focus on the paper he is reading on patterns of seed distribution caused by rodent communities because he is imagining me flushed and reclined, a series of brushstrokes in the background of a better world. Coffee is far too expensive nowadays, and glorification should be included in the price.

10.03.2024 mildly hungover in an Oxford coffee shop listening in to the airpod conference call of a young man in tweed with red socks and velvet loafers and a pocketwatch and a montblanc pen who is attempting to set the groundwork for company collaboration

I believe I employed the word "crystallize"

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