affirmations
Valerie Braylovskiy
You need to eat healthy. Go to the grocery store and buy some fish, ask the fishmonger which fillet contains the most mercury to poison your perky sister-in-law at the dinner table. I am a chef, you say. Poison can be edible.
Look at yourself in the mirror. Tell you, the self-loathing other, you love yourself. Four syllables to purge, along with last night’s fish.
Affirmations every day, twice a day. Three times a day on Saturdays because you are ashamed to go to synagogue. This is your prayer.
I am kind. Kindly repeat this and affirm you haven’t spoken to your friends in one year. Plurality implies abundance, which you replicate with television subscriptions and canned marshmallows.
Exercise. A run will warm your joints, who complain of regret and solitude. Circle past your old neighborhood, pretending like you are a tourist lost on a suburban vacation. These houses, filled with strange white faces, are your friends.
Be happier. Find that happy little pill, you kept it in your cupboard for a reason. Swallow without water, three times a day.
Repeat each day.
Look at yourself in the mirror. Tell you, the self-loathing other, you love yourself. Four syllables to purge, along with last night’s fish.
Affirmations every day, twice a day. Three times a day on Saturdays because you are ashamed to go to synagogue. This is your prayer.
I am kind. Kindly repeat this and affirm you haven’t spoken to your friends in one year. Plurality implies abundance, which you replicate with television subscriptions and canned marshmallows.
Exercise. A run will warm your joints, who complain of regret and solitude. Circle past your old neighborhood, pretending like you are a tourist lost on a suburban vacation. These houses, filled with strange white faces, are your friends.
Be happier. Find that happy little pill, you kept it in your cupboard for a reason. Swallow without water, three times a day.
Repeat each day.
Valerie Braylovskiy (Pomona '25) is from San Francisco, CA and loves exploring the intersections between prose and poetry.
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