love song for a space rock

plus bird omens, hot mess idols, and Soup Swap Day

One dim November afternoon in 1954, 34-year-old Ann Hodges lay down on her couch, pulled the quilts around her body, and fell asleep. She woke in pain and disorientation to a house full of smoke, a hole in the roof, and a large, rough rock on her living-room floor. She’d been hit by a meteorite.

The eerie bruise on the left side of Ann’s body would eventually heal, but the event changed the course of her entire life. Ann’s story is haunting, science-adjacent, and strange—so, obviously, I wrote a poem about it.

You can read it here.

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other things i’ve written

• I recently learned that my medical misogyny essay from 2017 was reprinted in a gender studies textbook alongside work from bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Emily Dickinson, and Virginia Woolf. (Pause for bewildered happy crying.)

• Does anyone else over-identify with messy narrators? Just me? For Sad & Famous, I wrote a mini-essay about my complicated and {almost} entirely one-sided relationships with authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Maggie Nelson. You can read it here.

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tiny magic

January 30, in case you were wondering.

Every morning I research that day’s obscure holidays and observances and record the best ones in my journal. Here are some of my favorites from the past few weeks:

• Tenderness Toward Existence Day (1/19)

• Soup Swap Day (1/21)

• Come in from the Cold Day (1/22)

• National Kazoo Day (1/28)

• Decorating with Candy Day (2/1)

• Wave All Your Fingers at Your Neighbor Day (2/8)

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augury

(n.) 1: divination by interpreting the movements of birds. 2: an omen or portent.

I saw a pileated woodpecker toward the end of 2022, and since then I’ve been seeing—and hearing—woodpeckers everywhere. I’ve decided that this is significant, and that these birds are now good omens. If you see a woodpecker of any kind, please a) consider it a portent of blessings ahead and b) tell me about it.

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Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Do you have any personal holidays, signs, or symbols I should look out for? There’s always room for a few more.