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Reply Hazy, Try Again Later
September 19, 2024
I hit a wall the other day. A friend asked me a simple question: “Do you want to do X?” And my brain simply went, **R2D2 noises**. Loudly. Followed by a...
Stay
September 15, 2024
Tell me something beautiful. Let it be the soft fog on an early morning, where the world seems to vanish. The particular quiet, a cousin to snow-silence....
Detours
September 12, 2024
I used to be really bad at detours. I mean literal detours—when the road I’m supposed to take is closed, and I have to venture off into the unknown. Even...
AI Has No Empathy
September 8, 2024
I read this headline about AI in end-of-life care. Can it make those decisions easier? After my initial horror, I sat with the question for a while, looking...
Little Beacons
September 5, 2024
Yesterday, I stumbled across this, and it resonated with me: So I wrote this: I cross my 7s, because someone I loved wrote them that way. I take my coffee...
Show Me Your Fucking Heart
August 28, 2024
The other day, I wrote this: Life’s short. We are all often aching in one way or another. Send the text. Share the photo. Make a gesture. Love without...
Who I Am
August 24, 2024
Tell people how you feel. Today, this stopped me in my tracks for a moment. I think it’s one of the most important things we can do in this life. Scary? Yes....
Softness
August 23, 2024
I value being let in, leaned on, trusted. There are people I no longer speak to whose secrets I will always keep, no matter what. Because my...
Getting Home Safely
August 14, 2024
What I know of care is this: It is an active thing, never passive. The same can be said for love, but that’s a topic for another day. I’m very much a “text...
Time Passes, But It Doesn't
August 7, 2024
[Note: This was supposed to send last week, but glitched. So, I’m sending it now.] I’m drafting this ahead of time. I said they’re be no new newsletter this...
Yesterday and Another Lifetime Ago
August 2, 2024
The anniversary of my mom’s death is next week. I hate the word anniversary for that kind of thing. Anniversaries are supposed to be fun and good. This is...
On Caring
July 27, 2024
I keep starting to write a newsletter, only to stall out partway through. It is annoying, honestly. I have thoughts! But they aren’t necessarily cohesive in...
A Little Bit on Quiet and a New Poem at The Deadlands
July 19, 2024
A dear friend remarked yesterday that I’ve been quiet. Or, at least, quiet for me. And they weren’t wrong. That’s going to be the norm for a bit, probably....
A Kind of Bulwark
July 12, 2024
The best advice I can give is to move toward joy. That you can set down the things that make your heart ache. That sometimes you have to trust yourself,...
On Judgement
July 4, 2024
I remember having a conversation a few years back, where someone was just absolutely railing against X. On and on and on and on. It was rant. And I sat...
Enough
July 1, 2024
When the wolves come, breathe— do not offer them your throat, do not assume the walls will keep you safe, do not bury yourself in the dark— there are weapons...
Pasta Sauce? Pasta Sauce.
June 28, 2024
So, I posted a version of this on The Bad Place ages ago. Alright, kittens, who wants to learn how to pasta make sauce? I make this by the blender full, so...
Odds and Ends
June 21, 2024
It has been a good week. I mean, aside from it being hotter than hell. Surprising, yes. And informative, too. I’ve got a poem coming out in The Deadlands in...
A Few Bits and Bobs
June 13, 2024
Julia Rios, and a bunch of amazing writers, have put together an anthology to help Jessica Wick. I don’t know Wick personally, but she is a lovely writer and...
On Vulnerability
June 7, 2024
I am not always good at being vulnerable. I’m not sure any of us are, really. There’s a weird tension between wanting very badly to be seen be someone and...
Website URL
June 1, 2024
Soooo, I borked the URL to my own website, in the last email. I can’t fix it. *Captain Picard face palm* So, in case you actually want it: alitrotta.com.
In case you need to hear this today...
June 1, 2024
[The other day] on Bluesky, I wrote about how—and I firmly believe this—no one is hard to love. That, if someone makes you feel that way, it’s entirely on...
Cool Things: A Recap
May 18, 2024
The past couple of weeks have held some incredible joys. I feel beyond lucky. I had a short story published in Worlds of Possibilities from the wonderful...
Pain's Always a Sign Something's Wrong
April 28, 2024
At some point, the impossible will happen—and someone you trust will hurt you terribly. At that point, emotions aside, you have to figure out: was this...
Small Gestures, Little Bits of Kindness
April 4, 2024
One thing I value above a lot of things is consistency. Knowing someone is in your corner—will cheer you on or cheer you up—is everything. We all lead busy...
Cash (June 5, 2017-March 19, 2024)
March 23, 2024
It’s so strange, to me—the emptiness. The space that used to be filled has gone silent. The bed is empty. The food dish unfilled. I find myself haunted by...
Weirdos Unite!
March 15, 2024
You’re never gonna be too weird for me. I said this to a friend, the other day. It’s true. I like weird. I like authenticity. I like people to feel...