Senses of Reality
Some short stories and poems for your heart, and mine.
Hi, dear hearts.
This week I got to meet a beloved local friend for breakfast and coffee. After standing in line chatting and picking menu items, I went to pay for our food and highly anticipated hot beverages before being told the man in line ahead of us, someone who knows my friend but is someone I hadn’t officially met until that morning, left $40 with the cashier to help pay for our meal. It covered almost all of it. It was such a simple and thoughtful gesture, and it set the tone for the entire day, injecting a much-needed dose of hope and community into what’s been an otherwise notably bleak week.
For anyone who doesn’t already know, I’ve long been a bright blue dot in an overwhelmingly red state. We’ve lived in the West Central Mountains of Idaho since 2015; 2025 will mark a decade here. We’re here because this is one of the places where our hearts are most at home; we disagree with essentially everything the leadership of this state thinks about how to govern its populace and we’re not quiet about it.
I’m under no illusion I very likely have neighbors who voted Republican across their ballots, neighbors who didn’t take enough issue with the belligerent figurehead of the party to vote for someone more competent. I want to believe the man who paid for our breakfast voted differently than the majority of Idahoans, but the truth is, I have no idea how he voted (or even if he voted).
I only know that he chose to make it clear how supportive he is of his own community in a tangible and unexpected way. I only know how appreciative and hopeful my friend and I felt in that moment.
It doesn’t fix or change anything big-picture, of course. I’m certainly not sharing this story to splash a bucket of positivity across your screens and inboxes. Another four years of the sort of blatant and unapologetic misogyny, bigotry, cruelty, and overt white supremacist priorities this administration has promised to center as their legislative foundation is legitimately terrifying and rage-inducing. If you’re scared and angry and sad right now, I think that means there’s something right with you.
I wanted to share that story because it was so surprising and so aptly timed, reminding me of how connected we are at a time I most needed to see that connection and care in action.
I wanted to share that story because it reminded me that while this election once again proved we’re indeed surrounded by people who aren’t doing much collective critical thinking about what “liberty and justice for all” actually means—not as the country’s slave-owning “Founding Fathers” imagined it, but as it should be in a truly just and inclusive society—we’re also surrounded by people who see us, and care about us, and who will show up for us in myriad ways in the days, weeks, and years to come.
Something else unexpectedly lovely happened this week. A long-beloved family member I rarely get to see and rarely talk to on a regular basis reached out to me and asked if we could talk on the phone sometime soon. They’re queer [something else we have in common] and estranged from their own immediate family, but still wanted to connect with kin this week of all weeks. It was such an honest text and I felt so proud to receive it. I immediately responded, “Yes, of course.” A handful of texts later was all it took to schedule a mutually agreed upon time to reconnect, at which point we ended up having an almost two-hour conversation that lifted my spirits in ways I couldn’t anticipate when I originally agreed to a phone date. I don’t think I’ve talked on the phone for almost two hours since I met Matt in the summer of 2011.
RECOMMENDED READING FOR THE MONTH AHEAD
Poetry:
"November" by Maggie Dietz
“A Mark of Resistance” by Adrienne Rich
"Motto" by Langston Hughes
"A Poem in which I Try to Express My Glee at the Music My Friend Has Given Me" by Ross Gay
"You Are Your Own State Department" by Naomi Shihab Nye
"won't you celebrate with me" by Lucille Clifton
Long-form:
“I’m Disturbed by 2016 Me” by Gabrielle Blair [better known as
]“The Sometimes Newsletter No. 241” by
“Creative Response” by
There’s been a meme circulating post-election about how people don’t want poetry right now; they want a functioning government. A hearty YES, PLEASE to the latter sentiment, even as I can’t really relate the former sentiment (though I do understand it; in times like these we all find solace in different places). I always want poetry. I need poetry. I think it’s one of the most potent forms of art we have at our disposal as humans.
It’s no surprise that it’s the form of writing I fell in love with first, after losing my dad at a young age and needing a way to express what I was feeling and everything we weren’t talking about as a family—namely, grief, and how ravenous it is.
It’s not at coincidence I begin and end most DIVE writing group sessions with a piece of poetry. Nor is it haphazard that I include poems in these “Recommended Reading” sections within every Kerrtopia post I write.
On Wednesday of this past week, facing the news of who won the presidential election and processing what we’ve lost as a country, the first thing I thought to do was share poems with friends and family.
It’s intentional that I’m quite literally surrounded by poetry whenever I’m at my desk (or any desk). Long before I first read it for myself via one of the most underrated and under-taught books about writing, I’ve shared Ray Bradbury’s philosophy as poetry as one of the best catalyst for creativity, and specifically as a tool for good writing.
“Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms.”
*You can find some closing notes on community and writing prompts below.
SOME NOTES ON COMMUNITY
Every week during any particular three-month DIVE session I share words of mine, alongside poems and other potent writing curated from elsewhere, packaged in an email with bespoke writing prompts for that particular week. These are the words I shared earlier this week, a day before the election, as it were:
This past week, I haven't been able to stop thinking about community—the places we have it, and the places we need it. I can't stop thinking about the places we can readily find connection and collaboration, where and when we might create community for ourselves, and where and how we can nurture community into collective growth and strength.
Community is such a gift. It's inherently powerful. It's altogether necessary and exceedingly helpful whenever we face uncertainty, whenever we're forced to reckon with both literal and metaphorical darkness.
I wrote it back in June and I'm writing it again now: Our respective and collective liberation is woven together. It always has been; it always will be.
Since November began I’ve started almost every morning in a tiny two-lane saltwater pool, breathing, breathing, breathing as I swim laps hours before the sun rises, hours before official to-do lists and work days begin, hours before I’m otherwise needed in any way.
It’s no secret I’m happiest and feel the most capable, the most myself in the water. Akin to the way regular cold water time brings clarity, balance, and joy to my life, the return of an intentional near-daily swim routine has once again quickly become been a sincere and lasting balm for me, come what may. No matter what anxiety I walk into the water with, I always walk out exhausted and happy. The power of serotonin, of gratitude, of belonging in action, no doubt.
What are you doing to take care of yourself? To take care of your beloved communities? Is there somewhere locally you can plug in? Someone you can ask for help if and when you need it?
A gentle reminder that you don’t have to have all the answers right now. There isn’t ever one perfect answer. Your answers can (and should) change. It’s okay to feel quiet, to feel disoriented, to feel like screaming at the top of your lungs. Grief is good and necessary. As is rage. Our grief and anger can move and motivate us, if we let them.
I highly recommend taking the time you need to really let yourself feel everything you’re feeling; just, please, don’t give up. We need you in the days ahead. We need each other.
Don’t forget how powerful you are. How powerful we are together. In community is where we’re strongest. In community is where we flourish and grow and nourish each other for the long years ahead.
If you need help in the days, weeks, and months to come, please reach out. I mean it. You aren’t alone. I’m here. We’re in this together.
WRITING PROMPTS FOR THE MONTH AHEAD
Write the world you want to see into existence. Try to get as detailed and tactile as possible.
Bring the outside in. Sometime in the next week, go for a short (or long) walk. Or simply sit outside for a handful of minutes. [Maybe try enjoying your coffee outside.] When you get home/back inside, write down everything you saw, heard, and smelled while you were outside. Anything and everything you can remember.
Follow-up prompt: Pick something you saw/heard/smelled on your walk or outside porch hang and spend 10 more minutes writing about it.
Let it out. Write a scene where one friend is venting to another. Don't worry about making it perfect; let it be honest.
Community-building. Write about what community means to you. Where do you have it? Where do you still need it?
As always, I recommend sitting with each of these prompts for at least ten minutes at a time. Set a timer and try to keep writing without stopping or self-editing or even trying to steer yourself a certain direction. I’m a firm and longtime believer that when it comes to prompts like these, wherever you end up on the page is precisely where you’re meant to be.
Do you know someone who would benefit from receiving regular writing prompts to their inbox, who might delight in reading some intentional rambles about words and water and the power in finding our respective and collective (voices +) senses of place?
I’d love it if you’d share this post and Kerrtopia with them.
Kerrtopia is a free offering, though I've turned on paid subscriptions for this newsletter if you have the means to support it now or anytime in the future. It's not necessary to pay to read, but it is of course very much appreciated. I’ll likely be adding some special content for paid subscribers down the line. Thanks for reading, and for your ongoing support. I’m grateful you’ve found me here, grateful we’re here together. You can also find me on Instagram.
I appreciate all of this so much.
An add on to the creativity we need right now. In 2020 I had a little crisis as a writer. I basically thought, what is the point in writing when cops can just murder someone in broad daylight, have it filmed and watched by millions, and still nothing changes? Who am I to spend my days writing when that kind of injustice lives in the world?
Later that year I attended the AWP purely to watch a panel put together by a fellow writer friend on the importance of writing beyond Capitalist proscription. The emphasis of everyone on that panel, all queer, BIPoC, disabled folks, was how important it is to tell our stories in our voices no matter what. That it's more important than ever when the status quo is trying to reassert itself hard.
I can tell you in the wake of this election, I feel no crisis around the art i make and the things I write. Creativity is an innate human thing we all have, and records of my existence are resistance.
Thank you so much for the reading suggestions. This was such a comforting read itself. I appreciate you and love how generous you are with your words.