“Give yourself ten minutes.
Give yourself ten years.”
— Kaitlyn Boulding, “Questions to Ask Yourself Before Giving Up”
The most delicious peach has yet to be devoured.
Many persimmons have yet to sublet your mouth.
You don’t believe lychees exist after you’re gone (but that’s the ego talking).
What hubris to assume you’ve eaten enough (or the best!) xiaolongbao!
The woman at Sunfresh Bakery would wonder where you’ve gone.
Your palate for BBQ is, at this moment, woefully incomplete.
What if the best bubble tea flavour is still out there somewhere?
Many people have yet to try your durian dumplings (Thanks Tony for the recipe!).
You have yet to find out if there’s a fruit dumpling that would be utterly disastrous.
One day you will return to their farm.
You promised to fold H*rper into a dumpling and dip him in fracking oil.
You haven’t yet promised to fold Tr*deau into a dumpling and dip him in LNG sauce.
Some local politicians haven’t blocked you yet (uhm what are you all waiting for?!).
There are at least three dozen acupuncture points she hasn’t yet poked.
How will your acupuncturist find out what happened?
Your flesh suit craves watercolour snakes, crayon fruits, neon leaves, silly faces.
One day the sea will have come back; you will want to smell her salt body against your skin.
So many stickers have yet to find their surface.
There are so many pebbles who pine for the heat of your palm.
There are oceans of sand you haven’t grazed with your fingers.
There are many more deep-sea creatures to fall in love with.
If a week later they find out how eels have sex, how can you forgive yourself?
Tardigrades would send in a complaint.
The quantum entanglement committee would read the report instantly, how embarrassing.
They will find out that you abandoned a String of Buttons in a mason jar.
You won’t be around to submit an appeal, now that’s REALLY embarrassing.
The sweetest cat you’ve ever met will be sad.
Your other favourite cat will also be sad.
You’re madly in love with his dad.
Okay, it’s more of a longstanding crush but let’s exaggerate a little here, okay?
Wouldn’t it be fun to exaggerate a little while longer.
Koalas don’t know how to fight ostriches and only you have the instructions.
To croak having only tried two vibrators is a great waste.
You’d be so sexy with silver hair.
You have no clue at which pinprick geographic coordinates you’d like to be buried.
Leaving this earth without having gone stargazing would be your worst offense.
Your lips will be cold, but you will be glad because you finally got to see an aurora borealis.
If you haven’t read all the spiritual texts, how can you say you’ve figured it all out?
There are still so many more Dionne Brand books to read.
There are still so many little leaves to pocket and leave alone.
There are still so many jellybeans to name.
There are so many more puppies to pet.
There are so many more people to piss off.
Someone out there knows how to touch your body properly.
It will be after you let yourself teach them.
You haven’t talked to a lawyer about what to do about your assets.
Who are we kidding, it’s much better to spend your money on fairy lights than a lawyer.
It will take a while longer to earn six figs in Virtual Fisher#7036 on Discord.
The fish would not be happy if you didn’t get them Wise Bait at level 50.
Maybe at level 50 they’ll tell you what Wise Bait is.
You haven’t watched every one of Wong Kar-Wai’s film—that’s heresy.
There’s enough time on this earth to watch all of Alanis Obomsawin’s films.
If you haven’t watched all the movies Lucy Liu has ever appeared in, what is even the point?
It is unacceptable that you haven’t watched all of Sailor Moon!
It is unacceptable that you haven’t watched the episode where Mr. Ratburn gets married!
It is unacceptable that you haven’t gotten to the gayest part of Adventure Time!
You and Brianna haven’t yet co-written that Vancity Sherlock Holmes adaptation.
When the show flops you two will laugh about it exactly twenty-one years later.
You haven’t written that horror story like you promised, how rude.
There are still a hundred hours of b-roll to edit.
There are still a hundred hours of audio to edit.
There are still so many TikTok videos to snort at.
There are so many brooms for you to shoplift.
With which to roll up bad dreams like Katamari.
You will get to sweep up alibis so many more times.
There is another moment, another breath.
You simply haven’t sung karaoke enough times, darling.
If you’re not at your own memorial, how can you make sure everything goes as planned?
Sorry but it’s just not okay to not have tried ACID at least once.
What? Dying before Henry Kissinger? What?!
They haven’t yet invented a lighter you can use.
Imagine retiring and living somewhere you can get paint on the floor and there’s a slide!
Someone on WeChat can teach you how to speak Liuheng dialect.
Someone on WeChat can teach you how to speak Pujiang dialect.
What kind of millennial would you be if you’ve never seen MCR in concert?
One day you’ll be the W6RST in an all-queer azn prog metal band.
One day they will find out that reincarnation is real.
You haven’t yet made up your mind about whether this is the right choice, philosophically.
You want to be there when the prisons crumble.
The Judge Rotenburg Center in Canton, Massachusetts is still open.
There are things worse than death, yes, but inside a holepunch, right now, you aren’t in danger.
You’d be so cute having completed your four thousand and sixty-nineth mental breakdown.
What if in 2060: no one is without/too much.
What if in 2070: every leaf is a home/space odyssey.
What if tomorrow: you learn how to apologize.
What if they invent a time machine.
What if too late is not part of its programming.
What if you were secretly a magician.
What if they believed you.
There are still so many spices for your tongue to tease.
Just a few more hours of stimming and you will feel better.
Just another episode and it’s bedtime for real.
A timer cannot go past its battery life.
Waiting and waiting and waiting is part of the process.
Maybe he’ll send you another song.
Maybe another meme will make you laugh.
This is not the closure you were searching for.
This is not the peace you were searching for.
This is not the freedom you were searching for.
It would be silly to let them win.
